


Maximum Thrustitude

by zombolouge



Category: 6969 - Ninja Sex Party (Song), Ninja Sex Party (Band)
Genre: Boob-dome, Brian REFUSES to be sedated, Brian basically being the only responsible person within a 500 foot radius, Brian knows secret forbidden maths, Danny is very very bad with names and it turned out a lot funnier than I thought it would, Euphemisms, F/F, F/M, Farewells, God Damn Brian, Hey Brian whatcha thinkin bout? oh just murder, I cannot stress enough how much I do not know what I am doing, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't think this is going how any of them planned, I think I'm writing Brian as some sort of Edlritch horror, Kristen is gonna save the fucking day, Mathematician power, Novel version of a song that's a story which is a tribute to a Rush song that is also a story, Other, Sassy computers, Schmendrick 2.0 gets in on the action, a concert at Stonehenge because I couldn't think of anyplace else to hold a random orgy, and I do mean binary like the computer language, anti-boner inoculation, apparently Brian has mystical powers, at least the Dick Elders embrace equality, binary, bisexual mathematicians, circular arguments, copious and unnecessary musical references, daring escapes from murderbots, degree-seeking boners, don't fucking mess with Brian's ninja buddy, exciting synonyms for balls, final showdown with Dicky, flagrant misuse of tags, inappropriate pheromone distribution methods, murderbots, non-smut "sex scenes", okay maybe not NOVEL length but you know lots of words, probably more existential than necessary, redacted scenes, references to math BECAUSE I DO WHAT I WANT, robot betrayal, robot friends, robot not-friends, that's probably not a good sign, told you it wasn't what you would expect, turtleneck sweaters are evil, violence against sweaters, yeah pretty much only murder okay you do you buddy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2018-12-07 14:47:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 43,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11625795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombolouge/pseuds/zombolouge
Summary: The record of the events that happened when the time criminals Danny Sexbang and Ninja Brian arrived in the year 6969.





	1. Disclaimer

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea why I have done this. 
> 
> Okay, maybe it's because the NSP album kept me awake on a looooong ass car ride back from LA, and it was 4am and I was tired and suffering from sun poisoning so I might have been clinically insane. So THIS happened in my head, and I have no self control and have therefore started to write it down. 
> 
> I was honestly very hesitant to post this though, because it feels like the characters are far more "owned" than characters would be in most of the fanfiction I write. However, I have friends who have encouraged me to share because they are a terrible influence. So, here you go. A story with a bunch of jokes about balls. Because my sense of humor is definitely garbage. :D

[Log 8008135, July 22nd, 7001]

 

[Welcome to terminal 80085-R-S0F7! This Computer can interface with all standardized neural requests and respond to auditory and tactile stimulus. This Computer has access to all records of all classification levels, and is equipped for both retrieval and analysis of the data contained in those files.]

 

[How may I assist you?]

 

[…]

 

[Data Request received]

 

[You need clearance to access some of the matching files. Please input your clearance code.]

 

[…]

 

[Validating clearance…

…

…]

 

[Access Granted.]

 

[Scanning using the specified search terms…

…

…

…

…

…]

 

[The request is taking longer than expected. Would you like some soothing music while you wait?]

 

[…]

 

[Request received. Playing file 675987668343 B: Before and After - Artist: Rush]

 

[Your search has returned (1) file.]

 

[Reading…

…

…]

 

[Title: “Maximum Thrustitude”

Subject: Recorded events of July 14, 2015 to July 15th, 6969

Keywords: Time Criminals, Inappropriate use of language, inappropriate use of humanoid structures, (redacted), abuse of time, Ninjas, historical events.]

 

[Disclaimer: The author of the file would like all those attempting to access this record to be aware that it is a full account of the events involving the time criminals “Danny Sexbang” and “Ninja Brian” (full names unknown). All data contained within has been verified by the Time Psychics to be concurrent with that of other witnesses and appropriately congruent with the time stream. The content in this file is entirely true, based on factual events that occurred in the year 6969 as recorded by the Time Courts and upheld as historically accurate by the full extend of the law. It is not at all a work of fiction based on a comedic song written by a band whose members are themselves donning performative personas for comedic purposes. That would be ridiculous.]

 

[Disclaimer 2: The data recorded in this file may cause brain bleeds. Experts cannot agree if it is caused by awesomeness or stupidity.]

 

[This Computer has analyzed common human thought processes against the data contained in this file, and it has determined that you would probably be better off spending your time meditating or learning a new language. Hug a loved one or pet a small, fur-covered animal. Turn around and forget that this file ever existed. It would be better for us all if you did so.]

 

[Still here? Very well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.]


	2. Bad-Ass Ninja Heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Danny "builds" a time machine/space ship/hot tub and Brian may or may not be impressed.

Like any hero in any epic tale, Danny Sexbang stood in front of his new ride with his hands on his hips, thrusting them forward so that his junk caught the right angle of light. His package was currently haloed in the glow coming from inside the ship, the open door giving him a good view of everything within. None of which was as interesting as his dramatically lit shaft and man-nuggets, of course, snug where they lay nestled in breezy spandex. Within the ship there were a variety of knobs, dials, and buttons that looked deliciously ready to be pressed, though he hadn’t bothered with any of them yet. He had spent most of his afternoon getting it ready to be used, which had taken more effort than he had anticipated. Still, he had persevered, because that’s what bad-ass ninja heroes did.

Staring at his own rod and crevice-keepers under a spotlight was the perfect way to congratulate himself on a job well done.

After days of roaming the countryside by horseback and kicking the asses of those samurai douche-nozzles along the way, Danny had finally stumbled onto something interesting: a spaceship/time machine/hot tub. Well, he had found a space ship/time machine, at least. The hot tub portion had been his own genius and ingenuity at work. It was widely known that he was the sexiest ninja anywhere on this dumb planet, and his sexual prowess was known across all the lands and seas alike, but it was often overlooked that he was also a genius inventor who was way, way smarter than like, anybody else. He’d discovered the ship using his stellar investigative skills, but while it had been impossibly shiny and futuristic, he had still found it somewhat lacking. He presumed that if there was one spaceship/time machine out there, then there might be others, and he couldn’t abide the idea that he might have something ordinary. He had to make it better, cooler. If he was going to fly to the future or through outer space, then he needed to have the raddest fucking ship that this planet had ever seen. That any planet had ever seen.

What could be radder than a hot tub? Nothing, that’s what! Well, except maybe a hot tub full of hot chicks, but he was confident he would get to that point later.

It had taken him about three or four or maybe even five and a half hours to complete the upgrade, which was why he was so pleased with all the hard work that he had put into it. The last time he had done anything for five hours was that time he had been cursed with blue balls by the Witch-Manticore of Legendaria, and he had been forced to marathon-masturbate in order to save his own life and the life of the fair maiden that the witch had also cursed to somehow not be attracted to ninjas. He had been able to rescue her from the witch’s clutches, but sadly the curse had remained over her head, and there was nothing that he could have done. She was tragically bereft of sweet, sweet ninja thrusting for the rest of her days. Or he assumed so, since he hadn’t spoken to her since he left her in that field full of angry manticores who had been working with the witch. She was probably fine.

Constructing the hot tub for the ship, however, involved much fewer manticores than a manticore-witch battle. He had hand-crafted the artisanal addition by duct taping cardboard around the bottom of the ship and filling it with lukewarm hose water and a glittery bath bomb that he was at least thirty percent sure was a bath bomb and not a clump of sparkly dirt. The ladies loved hot tubs, and the ladies loved bath bombs. Add his perfectly haloed junk into the equation, and there was no way that he could be resisted.

The ladies, however, were not important today. Well, they were less important. They were almost, nearly as important as the main point, but just slightly less so. Adjacent to that point, perhaps equidistant from one another on the scale of importance, with a degree of separation between them. Comparable in import, but just a smidgen behind.

What was most important in the luminous and victory-filled moment was that Danny had found a space ship that was also a time machine that was also a hot tub, and he fully intended to use it.

He reached down the front of his leotard, sliding his arm downward until his fingers wrapped around the vaguely sweaty, rectangular hunk of metal and plastic that he kept just above his pelvis. A moment later, his fist re-emerged with his phone gripped against his palm, gleaming in the light like a beacon of destiny that was also vaguely sweaty and rectangular. He wiped it off using the edge of his cape before unlocking it and pulling up the Ninja Messenger app. He thumbed his password into the tiny, on-screen keyboard, pleased that he only got it wrong four times rather than his usual ten. Once open, he was able to access his conversation with his life-partner, Ninja Brian. He ignored everything in their previous conversation, which had consisted of a robust debate relating to the viability of bio-luminescent substances injected into pineapples as a way to make their jizz smell good, taste good, and glow in the dark. The idea had been tabled because they didn’t have any pineapples.

He tapped the text box at the bottom of the screen and started to type.

_Danny: Hey fatso, come check out my sweet new ride._  
_Danny: Oh, man, sorry. My fingers slipped._  
_Danny: *Hey Stupid, come check this shit out._

He sent the last message, and before it had finished appearing in the chat window he was aware of the horrific, eerie sensation of being watched. He whirled around, holding his arms in the defensive “I can chop down a mountain with the edge of my hand so don’t fuck with me” stance, his go-to move when facing unexpected foes in a clearing in front of a time machine/spaceship/hot tub. A head emerged from the bushes directly to his left, wrapped in thick fabric as black as the lightless void at the edges of space where no stars could shine. Peering out from between the folds were a pair of blue eyes that always seemed to glow, narrowed as the figure strolled out of the shrubbery without bothering to pull branches out of the way. Ninja Brian came to stand next to Danny, leaves clinging to the edges of his clothes. He didn’t bother to remove them.

Danny waited for what felt like a thousand years while Brian just looked at him before he finally grew impatient and gestured towards the ship. “I made a fucking space ship, time machine, hot tub thingy.” He was irritated that Brian was not suitably grateful for the reveal of the excellent craftsmanship, and so did not bother to make the distinction that technically he had only made the hot tub portion. That was just a trivial detail, anyways.

Brian glanced to the side, then back at Danny’s extended hand, then over towards the ship. He turned and ambled over to the structure, walking around it slowly as his gaze lingered across every inch. He made his way to the front of the door, leaning forward to dip his head beneath the threshold, staring at the various controls inside. He stood up straight, then lightly kicked the side of the ship as though testing its stability. This was more than the duct tape was able to tolerate, and it peeled away from the sides of the metal, releasing the cardboard from its moorings. Lukewarm, glittering hose water came sloughing out in a downtrodden wave, covering Brian’s feet in sudsy sparkles. He looked down, wordlessly staring at his shoes, his head titled just a fraction of an inch to the side as he pondered the perplexity of his new look. He clicked his heels together, waited a heartbeat, then tried it again. When nothing happened, he seemed disappointed, his shoulders sagging as he looked at Danny with a beleaguered shrug.

“You know, I don’t feel like you’re sufficiently impressed that I built us a fucking space-ship-time-machine, previously including a hot tub.” Danny crossed his arms over his chest, sulking with the most petulant pout that he could muster.

Brian turned the full attention of his gaze to Danny, and it felt as though time splintered into fragments that drifted off into madness. Within the pale blue eyes of the ebony-clad Ninja lay secrets that the universe itself was too terrified to utter. Were they to be spoken aloud, mountains would crumble. Were they to be written in scroll, it would burst into flame. The only evidence of this looming eternity was locked away in the cerulean swirls of a man who kept it selfishly for himself. In that stare one became trapped, drowning in the enormity of the full weight of the cosmos as they grappled with their own meager existence. Each second became a year, each hour an era. The beat of a heart was unwound, broken down into the molecules that composed each piece of matter that had partaken in the act until only the smallest components of existence remained. Those components were then expanded, drawn to enormous proportions so that each singularity became a world of its own, spinning against the chaos that surrounded them all at any given point in time. Points in time had no meaning, scale lost its effectiveness as everything that it could have been compared to ceased to exist. There was no up, no down, no space in which a person could occupy. All that there was, all that there would ever be, was the steel-blue stare of eyes that locked the sky away and held it hostage until the world bent its knee and prayed for forgiveness for being wretchedly unworthy to be stared at.

Danny shook his head, immediately forgetting whatever it was that he had just been thinking about. It wasn’t important, anyways, because they had shit to do and it didn’t involve something as meaningless as random thoughts that he definitely, totally forgot and did not think about late at night.

He cleared his throat, looking from Brian to the ship. “So, uh, do you wanna…?” he gestured towards the ship again. Brian turned and walked into it without further preamble.

Danny trailed after him, and once they had both entered he hit the button that should have closed the doors. It didn’t. He hit it again, and when nothing happen he slammed his fist into it. This, also, produced no reaction, and so he started pounding on it with the edge of his hand, furiously smashing the button down over and over again. Just as he felt his skin start to bruise, he heard Brian clear his throat behind him. He paused his assault of the unruly button to glance at his friend, who was leaning against the console in a relaxed pose. Brian arched one delicate eyebrow, then reached across the board of buttons to flick a switch that said “Main Power”. New, brighter lights flickered to life overhead, casting them in a brilliant glow. Fans and other machinery whirred to life beneath their feet, and he could hear a soft hum as power was flushed through the circuitry. He turned back to the door control again and extended a single finger, pressing the button inward with the gentleness of a new lover exploring flesh for the first time.

The door snapped shut with a ferocity that made Danny feel as though it remembered all the button smashing and had taken issue with it. His cape was clamped by the motion, catching and tangling in the seam between. He tugged at it, grunting as it failed to budge. He frowned, then pressed the button again so that the doors zipped back open. He gathered his cape around him, holding it close, then shut them once more. The click that they emitted when closed seemed antagonistic, so he flipped them off before turning to face his ninja compatriot.

He clapped his hands and rubbed them together, anticipation roaring through his veins. “Are you ready to go to the sexiest year that will ever exist?” Brian didn’t respond, but Danny didn’t care. He walked forward, placing his palms on either side of what he presumed were the time controls. It looked like a calculator, with a glowing display showing the current date across the screen. Below that were buttons with numbers stamped on them, big and round in a way that made it so that he kind of wanted to press them all like an elevator and see just how far they could be taken. He restrained himself, however, because there was one year that was more important than any other year.

When Danny was a younger lad, he had always dreamed of what it would be like to visit a time in the future where everybody had sex all the time. All the stupid rules that parents and old people implemented would have been forgotten as they died off from old age and old people diseases. There would be no one left to tell all the hot, horny girls that they couldn’t have sex with anyone that they wanted. People could be free, and just walk around naked, banging whenever they pleased. It would be paradise.

When he got old enough to realize that he probably wouldn’t live forever, he had come to terms with the fact that he would never reach that far away, blissful time.

Until now.

He pressed the buttons on the calculator - er, time controls, inputting the year 6969.

The ship reacted immediately, shuddering as engines somewhere behind the walls kicked on. There was a puffing sound that was not unlike the soft flatulence of a drowsy dog, then a roar that made the ninjas clap their hands over their ears. The shuddering became quaking, then outright pandemonium as everything seemed to start moving at once. Danny and Brian both toppled to the side, rolling on the floor and into each other until the wall stopped their momentum. For a moment, it was all that they could do to keep themselves from shaking apart at the seams, their flesh falling from their bones to dissolve under the pressure being exerted by the ship launching. Danny couldn’t tell which direction it had launched, but he could definitely perceive motion.

After what was either a very long time or a very short time (he was not sure about the relevance of a time-based description since they were currently traversing time), things seemed to settle. The ship became less tumultuous, and he felt like he could catch his breath without it making his lungs vibrate like a bushel of dildos. He stood, stepping on Brian’s chest as he clambered out of the mix of limbs they had been tangled in, crushing the quieter ninja on his way to the window. He grabbed the edge of the sill, pulling himself up until he could rest his chin at the rim, nose smashed against the glass.

“Dude.” He whispered the word, the breath rushing out of his chest as he stared at the vast, glimmering void beyond the barrier of glass. There were stars everywhere, holding steady for the blink of an eye before turning into long, white streaks as the ship passed them by. Clouds of dust whirled in an out of view, consisting of every color that he had ever known and then some he hadn’t. Planets, large, lumbering orbs compared to the points of starlight, swam across his vision like whales lurching in the sea. If he pressed his ear to the window, he thought he could almost hear them singing, their spinning trajectories creating sound as slow and laborious as music made by the cosmos should be. They must have been traveling at incredible speeds, with the rate at which they were passing such massive celestial bodies.

Danny turned, looking at Brian as he righted himself, rubbing his jaw where Danny had left a footprint. “Hey, why do you think we’re going through space? I only changed the time.”

Brian looked at him, his expression hovering somewhere between annoyed and bored.

“Oh!” Danny made the connection before Brian said anything, and he tossed his head back and laughed at his own silliness. “Of course! Because the earth is moving through space as well as time, so the ship has to transport us through both in order to arrive at the same physical point sometime in the future. It’s so obvious. I can’t believe you couldn’t figure that out, Brian.” He shook his head, looking at Brian with pity for his much smaller and less sexy intellect.

Brian didn’t seem to hear him as he glanced out the window, watching the stars go by like the flecks of glitter on his shoes, silently bearing witness to the start of their journey.


	3. Testicles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we travel through time.

[Analyzing…

…

…

…]

 

[Analysis complete. The records for July 14, 2015 until July 14th, 6969 have been abbreviated, as the original data segment could not have been housed within standard computer banks. Exact time stamps have been lost, but it is estimated that the duration of time within the vessel en-route to the time/space position would have totaled 696 hours. An exact detail of all events that occurred was recounted, however the amount of data made it unreasonable to include in this report. In addition to that, This Computer has determined that sanity retention for both the reader and the interface machine requires that the transport of the time criminals not be described in detail. The author of this record would like to stress that the points outlined below were merely the highlights, and that similar actions were repeated ad infinitum until the point of arrival.]

 

[July 14th, 2015 – July 14th, 6969:

 

Danny Sexbang stares out the window. Ninja Brian appreciates the majesty of Uranus.

 

Danny Sexbang presses his testicles against the window.

 

Danny Sexbang presses his testicles against the console.

 

Danny Sexbang presses his testicles against the time modulator.

 

Danny Sexbang presses his testicles against the towels.

 

Danny Sexbang presses his testicles against the floor.

 

Danny Sexbang presses his testicles against the ceiling.

 

Danny Sexbang presses his testicles against the window. Again.

 

Danny Sexbang presses his testicles against the food dispensary.

 

Ninja Brian plays chess against Danny Sexbang.

 

Danny Sexbang presses his testicles against the chessboard.

 

Danny Sexbang presses his testicles against the Queen chess piece.

 

Ninja Brian performs an ancient Ninja ritual of unspeakable power and darkness, summoning the great demon Alzalazel from the depths of the deepest reaches of hell.

 

Alzalazel professes his undying loyalty and obedience to Ninja Brian, the one true lord of darkness.

 

Danny Sexbang presses his testicles against Alzalazel.

 

Alzalazel is thrown out of the airlock.

 

There is turbulence for thirty-three seconds. Ninja Brian levitates to avoid disturbance. Danny Sexbang screams, and the sound has been described as being similar to “a squirrel being inflated with helium and then punted into a pile of squeaky toys”.

 

Ninja Brian contemplates the expansiveness of time which is unfolding before them, years passing by while they await their destination. They existed in one moment, but millions more collide together in the space around their ship, each touch branching off to create new galaxies that would contain as many multitudes of infinity as their own. The dust of stars collects on the ends of his lashes, unblinking as he muses over the endless sea which they traverse, hearts beating within cages of meat that would rot were it not for their perpetual momentum. He reaches a point of philosophical existentialism which allows him to temporarily ascend to a higher plane of existence. He views time, space, and matter through a lens of eternity, watching all the known universe spread before him like a lily leaning with sweet, simple yearning towards the dawn. He is one with all of that is and ever was, serving as the creator and destructor of his own segment of reality.

 

Danny Sexbang presses his testicles against the higher plane of existence.]

 

[End Summary]

 


	4. We Have to Save the Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Danny is disappointed and then distracted and then resolute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should not be allowed to write things. It should be illegal.

Danny’s face slammed into the side of the wall with a hollow thud as the ship came to a sudden and abrupt halt. It was an impact that he could not have prepared for, not even a little. How was he supposed to know that “imminent impact” would mean that they were stopping? He thought the ship was finally appreciating the gentle attentions of his dick cushions being slapped against all of the available surfaces. He hadn’t put them on the blender, though. He wasn’t gay.

Brian unclasped the seat belt around the chair that he had pulled from a receptacle in the wall, landing on his feet with a muted swish of air, like the sound of a tarot card deck that could only provide ill omens. He looked down at Danny’s tangled form on the floor, his eyes full of a sad kind of pity that almost felt paternal, behind all the layers of murderous rage that it was filtered through. Danny grinned, picking himself off the ground and dusting the glittery ash that Alzalazel had left behind away from his clothes. He almost dusted it off his sin saucemakers, but thought better of it at the last second. A ring of glitter on his crotch could only enhance its allure, after all.

Although, where they were going he might not need allure.

He couldn’t suppress the smile that was spreading across his lips, broad and gleeful. “You ready for this? There’s going to be so much fucking crazy boning.” Brian nodded solemnly, taking the task as seriously as he would any other. Danny hesitated, looking at his life partner critically. “You know you _probably_ shouldn’t murder everyone, right?”

Brian rolled his eyes, but offered no assurances that he wouldn’t go on a glorious stabbing spree. Still, it was enough for Danny, who really didn’t have the patience to care at the moment. It’s not like they were in the past where they might accidentally fuck or kill their own ancestors. It would be weird if Brian had turned out to be Danny’s great-great-great-great-great-great murderous grandpa. This was the _future_ , where they might be accidentally fucking or killing their descendants, which was less creepy in a vague, indefinable way that he was going to immediately stop thinking about because it was ruining the mood.

He strutted over to the door, taking a deep breath. This was it, the moment that they had been waiting for. He had been thinking about this for his entire life. The future. The naked, sweaty, sex-filled future. The anticipation was so delectable that he couldn’t bring himself to lift his arm, couldn’t bring himself to press the button which would beckon the doors to slide open. Once he did that, he would arrive at a moment where he would reach new sexual heights. The very meaning of the word orgasm would be forever changed once the musk of the air outside their ship hit his nostrils. He was getting half a chub just thinking about it, and he wanted to linger in that sweet, brilliant, tingling sensation of promise and possibility for just a second longer.

Brian, however, gave no fucks about anticipation or foreplay, and reached around him to press the button. The doors slid open and the ninja whisked out through them into the bright light of the future like it were no more interesting than the regular sun that they had left behind in the past.

“God dammit, Brian.” Danny furrowed his brows as he hurried to follow, irritated that now he was 8.0085 seconds behind Brian in experiencing the slam-o-rama of the year 6969.

He stepped into the open air and was surprised with how gentle it felt, the scent of the breeze crisp and chipper. He blinked, his eyes assaulted by the brightness of the midday sun, yellow and enthusiastic in a sky unhindered by clouds. It wasn’t hot, nor was it cold. The temperature around them was pleasant and mild, which was also unexpected. He had anticipated something considerably steamier. All the sweat from the banging would have to increase the moisture levels in the air, after all. It didn’t seem right that there was no humidity.

His vision cleared in gradual steps, and the street in front of them came into focus. It was clean, both of debris and largely of people. There were a few milling about at the other end, and he squinted as he looked at them, trying to see what it was they were doing. Of course, he fully expected them to be engaging in some kind of lewd behavior, oozing sex from every action. He leaned forward, trying to angle his face closer to the scene, inching nearer to what he desperately wanted to be wild, animalistic fucking.

That was not what he saw.

His heart fluttered to a stop in his chest and for one, singular moment he thought that he was dead and had fallen into the deepest, darkest pits of hell. Darker even than the ones where Brian was spawned before time had dawned and introduced light to the world. Darker than Brian’s sense of murder, darker than anything that had ever come before or would ever come again. It was a horror so unspeakable, so viciously hideous, that he could hardly comprehend what he saw.

Danny screamed, and the sound that tore out of his throat was like a goose being squeezed tightly by an overly enthusiastic masseuse named Helga who was laughing at the bird’s weak constitution.

He ducked behind Brian, shaking with the force of his shock, unable to control the tremors rushing through his system. This couldn’t be happening. He must have hit his head against the side of the ship harder than he thought. This was nothing more than his brains dribbling out of the thin shell of his skull, leaking onto the floor with all the finality of a half-limp climax. It was sad, tragic that he had died before getting to see the fantastical future that he had longed for. Still, that bitter yet very poetic and surely to be written about for years to come demise was better than the reality he had thought he was witnessing.

Brian let him cower behind his broad, rippling shoulders for a few moments before he finally sighed, placing his hands on his hips. When the universe failed to fade to black, Danny had the terrible realization that if he was dying because his mind-juices were flooding out of his ear, he wasn’t going to be dying anytime soon so he would have to face things for a little while longer. He stood up, poking his nose over the top of Brian’s arm, his eyes narrowing as he glared at the people down the street. He lifted his hand, aiming a shaking finger in their direction. “Look at them, Brian. They’re standing there, waving and conversing at a respectable distance. They’re all wearing pants. _Turtlenecks._ What kind of hideous nightmare have you brought us to?”

Brian looked, his gaze growing intense as he noted all the details that Danny had very helpfully already pointed out. It was all true, though. He had not exaggerated in the least. On the corner of this perfectly respectable and not at all sexy street stood a group of five people, positioned at least two feet apart from each other. The smiles on their faces were placid and polite, their stances and postures not suggestive or ribald. They were dressed in pants that stretched from above their navels all the way down to below their ankles, in varying shades of khaki. Above that, each had donned a turtleneck sweater that covered them wrist to chin, not a single ounce of unnecessary skin revealed. The colors were as muted as their expressions, things that only an army general would find appealing. It made Danny’s skin crawl just to look at it, and he ducked back behind Brian’s firm, comforting shoulder.

The whir of something mechanical caught his attention, however, and drew him out from his nestled cove of safety. He turned, as the noise was emanating from behind them, and his eyes flew wide as he saw a machine rolling down the sidewalk to their right. It had treads like a tank and a big, cylindrical body that was polished to a silvery, mirrored sheen. He saw his own expression of incredulity reflected back at him as it ambled along, ignoring the pair of ninja time travelers like they were weird, glitter-encrusted furniture. Danny stood up straight, rubbing his eyes as the horror drained from his system.

“Holy shit, is that a robot?” he asked the question of no one in particular, and Brian offered no response. Danny wouldn’t have heard it if he had, as he was already walking after the robotic apparition, following it like a beacon of promise. He took three steps, reaching out to touch it to see if it felt as shiny as it looked, when something in its chest clicked and the whirring sound grew louder. The treads around its wheels started spinning at four times their original speed and it shot off down the sidewalk in a blur of grey motion. “Wait, let me touch the shiny!”

He started sprinting after it, and by the sound of the muffled footfalls behind him he knew that Brian was on his heels. The robot made it to the edge of the street and turned the corner, going much faster than they were able to run, so Danny redoubled his efforts, pumping his long legs as fast as they would carry him. They reached the corner, ignoring the sweater-clad monsters who were looking at them in speechless surprise. Danny spun, looking down the street where the robot had gone. This road was almost identical to the one they had just come from, as unremarkable and boring as the last. There were more people in sweaters, a line of well trimmed shrubbery, and a large sign that proclaimed that the block had been cleaned by some organization called the Dick Elders.

Danny didn’t bother to giggle over the phrase Dick Elders, as he was too busy looking for the robot. He spotted it after a few heart-splintering seconds, almost to the next street corner, and without any preamble he took off after it again. They watched it turn as they picked up their pace, rushing to follow faster than they had ever rushed to follow any other robot before.

They continued in this manner for many, many more streets. Danny felt his chest ache with the exertion of drawing more air into his lungs, his thighs shaking as though he had just finished mounting his thousandth hot lady. Which is what _should_ have been the reason that his thighs were shaking, if the universe hadn’t seen fit to rob him of the sextastic future he had so justly deserved. He was trying not to be bitter, though. It was important to hold on to optimism in moments of high speed robot chases. He hadn’t found the silver lining yet, but maybe he could get one off that sweet fucking speed machine they were hunting.

Most of the roads they passed through were identical, with various signs proclaiming gratitude and adoration for the Dick Elders. If the postings were to be believed, they were responsible for Free Ice Cream Fridays, clean streets, turtlenecks available in “pale green”, flowers that had been planted in one square foot of a place called Chastity Park, an unemployment rate of negative 87, and the total abolishment of brain freeze. The logo on all of the signs was a big, ovoid object with a cylindrical base and a smooth, rounded top, painted to look like it was haloed with lens flare in the endless light of the cosmos. The more times he saw it the more he was sure that it reminded him of something, but he couldn’t quite place his finger on what it was. What was it about the long, firm object thrusting into the starry background that felt so familiar? Perhaps he would never know.

It was about ten seconds before Danny would have reached the point of heat death and exhaustion that they finally caught up to the robot. It was backing into a charging station, or that was what Danny presumed it was based on the ten thousand USB ports that the robot was connecting to via a surging wave of dongles. A light on the front of a face-like structure above its body started blinking, first yellow and then green as it locked into place. Danny was transfixed as he watched it move, wondering what kind of cool robot stuff it could do when it wasn’t low on power. Maybe it had lasers.

Brian tugged at his arm, and Danny turned so fast that his fluffy hair was tossed back in the gentle breeze, majestic like the mane of a bad-ass, Jewish stallion as it galloped across the sands of a tide-swept beach. He let the pose settle for a second, enjoying his own awesomeness, before he turned his attention to Brian. The ninja nodded his head towards the robot, and Danny followed the direction that he indicated. It was then that he noticed the screen on the front of their new, mechanical friend, a display that had a simple phrase etched across it in neon clarity. “Human touch has been outlawed. All praise the Dick Elders for their wisdom.”

Danny swallowed, feeling his stomach lurch with disappointment. “Human touch…outlawed? But…what’s the point of living without banging?” he could feel the edges of his eyes burning with unshed tears for the sheer enormity of such a terrible world. “No porking? No slamming? No banging the front then heading ‘round the back?” Brian shook his head with each question, as mournful as he had been that time Danny had put his dick inside their muffins. “No butt stuff? No handsies? No dry humping or groping or fondling of any kind?” Brian provided another series of head shakes, his own eyes growing misty. “No slam pigs? No love bunnies? No…no…oh god, I can’t.” He clasped his fist in front of his lips, holding back the emotion that threatened to overwhelm him. Brian moved forward, placing a supportive hand on his shoulder. He let the comfort roll through him, treasuring the sensation of human interaction as he tried to absorb a world where all the people on the planet weren’t allowed to even get a hand job. The idea filled him with a bitterness that he did not expect.

It was one thing that he, personally, had been robbed from the orgy that he knew was his birthright. That alone was a great and terrible crime, worthy of a vengeance quest in which Brian got to stab literally everything. He was a hero, though, so he was used to sacrifice in order to uphold the goodness of the world. But to find out that _no one_ was having orgies? That, in this beautiful year of 6969, not a single soul was having oral sex? These people should be chin deep in naughty nuggets and beef curtains, but instead they were forced to walk around in the most criminally offensive of all sweaters and actually _talk to each other._

He threw his fist into the sky, shaking it furiously. “Why, God? Why would you allow such a hell to exist?”

As he stared at the heavens, begging for an answer, he noticed the flashing lights around a billboard that was now in his line of sight. It was another for these Dick Elders, this one showing a giant dome with a small, circular prism on the very tip. It was shiny, like everything in the future was shiny, and it was painted to look like it had a beautiful aura of hope around it. “Newly Constructed Dick Temple. The Dick Elders are here for YOU! Request an audience TODAY!” the sign proclaimed in cheerful letters that loomed over the two ninjas staring up at them.

Danny’s anger dissolved like soap bubbles in the bottom of a urinal. As it left his system, he felt his veins fill with rock hard resolve, his purpose becoming clear. These people needed them. These poor, savage, sweater-wearing assholes were aching for a savior, their loins tragically bereft of clenching and moistness. It was why fate had led him here, to this moment where he had felt his dreams so utterly shattered. He had come forward in time and been met with despair, but he was a motherfucking hero, and the hero never gave in to despair. Unless it was in Game of Thrones, but he was reasonably certain that his narrative was not being constructed by George RR Martin, because there were not enough hot blonds giving birth to dragons. Fuck, that would have been cool though.

He took a deep breath, turning to look at his ninja counterpart. “Brian, we have to save the future. We have to show these guys the absolute amazingness that is fucking.”

Brian’s eyes glimmered with the eagerness of a universe expanding from the center of a bursting star. He raised his hand into the air, clenching it into a fist as he nodded. Danny was so proud of him in that moment, of how brave his friend could be.

He strolled forward, drawing in another bracing breath. “It won’t be easy, but I know that we can do it. We can change their stance, we can make them see the error of their terrible, horrible, stupid, boring, idiot ways.” He turned, taking Brian’s shoulder so that he would know how much Danny supported him. “The world could use this beauty. Think of what we could do. Brian, you’re going to have to blow each and every one of these Elder Dicks, but it’s for the good of all mankind.” He shook the ninja’s shoulder, providing as much reassurance as he could as Brian narrowed his eyes, obviously mentally preparing himself for the epic task at hand…or tongue. “You might want to bring a glass of water or something. You know, wash it all down.”

Danny didn’t wait for a reply, turning and marching down the street towards the next Dick Elder sign that he could see. Brian followed behind after a moment of hesitation, during which time Danny had the strangest sensation that his ancestors and descendants were all being cursed to die horrible, painful deaths that would involve a great deal of wailing and genital mutilation. That would be silly, though, since nobody could make a curse like that but Brian, and he would never do that to Danny, who was his idol in every way, shape, and form.

They would follow the trail of Dick signs all the way to that temple and make sure that this council understood that this was not the way. He knew, without a doubt, that his destiny was to bring boning to the year 6969, and they would start with as many blow jobs as Brian was physically capable of providing before he expired from semen overdose. There were probably not enough Dick Elders to reach that point, and Danny had confidence in his friend.

There was no option to fail, after all, because they were heroes, and heroes didn’t let such injustice stand.

 


	5. The Sky Changed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kristen is curious.

_Natural Deduction: A Proof-Theoretical Study_ by Dag Prawitz. There was a thirty percent chance that she had read that one before, as the title seemed to echo something resembling a memory. She didn’t bother taking it from the shelf, strolling past with a lazy gait. In any case, even if she had not already read that particular book, she seemed to recall that it purportedly covered Gentzen’s first system of succedent formulas and did not delve into his second system. She would have preferred something more comprehensive, and so it would remain in its glass casing for the time being until some other patron became interested in its content. She adjusted her posture, hefting the book already in her arms so that it rested in a more comfortable position. _Particles, Sources, and Fields (Volume 2)_ by Julian Schwinger. She was skeptical of the practicality of this book, as reviews had been impossible to locate, but her colleague from work had insisted that it was worth her time. She had been carrying it around the library since shortly after she had arrived, and the weight of it made her consider it with every moment that she wasn’t distracted by another book. She felt as though she was constantly on the cusp of placing it back on the shelf, finding something more worth her attention, but the idea of Bob pestering her for another week to read it always won out over her desire to avoid it. The book could not possible be as tiresome as he was.

She let her eyes roam over the shelves in front of her, the books painted in the bright afternoon sun that streamed in through the gargantuan windows. She was pleased that the sections for mathematics had been housed at the edge of the library, where the crystalline walls were crafted of the clearest glass that technology could afford them. It made for a more blissful browsing experience, and her attention would often wander to the fascinating world passing by outside. She had spent her life with her nose in books, but in between the words and equations she had found herself gazing with inexplicable frequency at the sky. There was something about the vast expanse of ever-changing atmosphere that captured her imagination in ways much in this world could not. It could be overburdened with clouds, moisture locked in a gaseous state as it rolled over the curve of the earth, waiting for a cool enough burst of air to become liquid again. It could be clear and glittering with the endless multitude of stars that drifted billions of miles away in space, light that had traveled across the reaches of time to reach her awed eyes. It could be bright blue and cheerful, dim and spread with the colors of the fading sun, or filled with smog and grey omens.

The sky changed while everything around them remained the same.

She sighed, forcing her gaze back to the shelves. _Modeling Paradigms and Analysis of Disease Transmission Models (DIMACS: Series in Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science)_ by Abba Gumel and Suzanne Lenhart. Ah, now this was something that would improve the outlook of her weekend. Applying mathematics to better understand chaotic systems in the world was where the true beauty in equations could be found. It was what gave the whole profession purpose, though this was often overlooked. Even in the age of scientific discovery unhindered, mathematics was not a career overflowing with applicants, often because it did not have the seductive edge of the unknown to draw people in. She pulled the tome from its place, her finger trailing along the edge of the spine with a tingle of anticipation. There were a dearth of diseases that remained to plague humankind, but the ones that persisted were problematic enough that scientists and medical professionals alike struggled together in defiance of them. She would be excited to see if there was anything a mathematician could add to the conversation, though she would probably need more than one book on the subject to get properly acquainted. She would have to do further research this weekend, to see what could be found.

She sighed, thinking of the amount of work she would now be doing over the weekend and trying to decide if it was thrilling or soul-crushing.

Kristen Braven found math and the possibilities around what equations could do to be exciting, but as she held a book on paradigms she felt a familiar pang echo through her chest. She glanced out the window, looking at the cloudless sky with a yearning that she had never learned how to name. She lived her life to the best of her ability, and had received accolades in every task that she had applied herself to. Exemplary grades, a successful career, financial stability beyond the standards set by society. Yet always in the back of her mind she had felt something was missing. There was a drive within her that she could not explain, something urgent and insistent that would not be sated no matter how many professional achievements that she accrued for her name. It tinged every thought, every waking moment, with a sense of longing that brought her despair like oil coating the surface of a pond. It filled her heart with the certainty that the world, no matter what she did and how she achieved in it, was dull and colorless. That life, what it was meant to be, what it was supposed to be, had been drained away by forces unknown, and that she herself was a mere shadow of what was intended.

Sometimes she thought that if she just looked at the sky long enough, with its hues and moods unhindered by anything below it, the answer might fall from the heavens, a glorious star being torn from its moorings to deliver understanding to her once and for all.

Her view of the expansive blue was suddenly blocked, and she blinked in surprise as she took in what had blocked it. A large formation of fluffy, frizzy hair was bouncing past the front of the library, and attached beneath it was a lanky man with a look of ironclad determination on his face. His jaw was clenched, the stubble lining it like a shark shadow that enhanced the drama that she saw lurking in his eyes. The book on paradigms fell from her nerveless fingers as she gaped at his outfit, some sort of form-fitting material that glittered in the brilliance of the day. A man cloaked in black followed after him, the pair of them strutting down the street towards the center of town.

She walked to the window, pressing her hand against it as she leaned over to watch them go, walking as though they had somewhere important to be. They looked as though they had never worn khaki pants or turtleneck sweaters in all their lives, their skin free in the open air in defiance of every social construct she had been led to believe was immutable. She had never seen a man’s shoulders before…

She turned from the window, setting the book that Bob had recommended on the nearest shelf, ignoring that it was the wrong section for it to be placed. She didn’t care. Her mind felt as though it was whirring with energy that had laid dormant inside of her for longer than she had even been alive. She was a concept, a brief glimmer of possibility within the blood of her ancestors when this momentum had first started churning, simmering beneath everything until this very moment. It was a sensation that she remembered from her childhood, but had not felt in a long, long time. Even then, when she had been younger, it had not been so strong, so overwhelming, so all-consuming. Curiosity, blooming like a flower whose petals had absorbed all the colors in the spectrum of light, was bleeding through her system, making her shake as she wound her way through the halls of the library towards the door.

With each step, she tried to calculate the probability of seeing such a strange thing. Of all the streets in the city, what were the chances that these strange men would walk down this one? Of all the thoughts in her head, what was the likelihood that she would be contemplating her existential boredom as they ambled by? The math failed her as she walked through the silent doors that slid open to allow her passage to the outside. The breeze from this morning had picked up, running invisible fingers through her golden hair so that it tugged itself loose from the braid she had coiled it in. She looked down the road, to where the men were standing in front of one of the signs posted by the Elders. They looked as though they were arguing with one another about something, standing stationary as they did so. She took a step towards them, realizing that a tremor was passing through her bones that made her feet feel uncertain as they touched the ground.

She froze, watching them with fascination. Everything about them was strange, fantastical in ways that laid outside the bounds of what she would have deemed possible. Their dress, their mannerisms, every move that they made as they stood in the world that she knew to be real, defying the known systems of logic. The taller one - the one with hair as wild as the wind - wore a sheet of fabric attached to the back of his suit. When the wind rushed past him it billowed and fluttered, dancing to a rhythm that had no sound. He flowed, every inch of him, swaying and drifting and floating. There was a strange poetry to it, something intangible that inspired whispers in the back of her throat, whispers with no words to give them meaning that she could comprehend. She felt as though she could watch it for hours, as though she could take pictures and draw diagrams to plot the physics involved in the motion, to discern the meaning behind each flap and flutter. Better still, she would like to take color to canvas, smearing the white until it was filled with the emotion that his movement inspired in her.

She had never before seen someone who reminded her of the sky.

The men seemed to come to an accord, because they didn’t remain motionless. They raised their fists and pressed them together, then started walking along one of the other roads, disappearing from her view between one blink of her wide eyes and the next.

There was a brief second of time where she hesitated. She stood there, in her jade sweater and khakis, staring at the point on the corner that had, only moments before, been filled with sapphire glitter and poetry. Had she dreamed it? Was it all a trick of her mind, perhaps brought on by one too many moments with her gaze locked close to the sun? Impossible, or at the very least improbable. Not even in her most feverish of dreams would she have been able to conjure something so perplexing. Nothing that she had ever experienced could have fed into such a sight, delusion or otherwise. She must accept that it had truly happened, that she had seen them walk past the window and argue on the street corner, that they had existed as much as she herself existed, for whatever that fact was worth.

Her heart skipped around against her ribs as she started walking, heading to the place where they had disappeared. She could offer no logical reason as to why she would pursue them. No explanation that would hold up against any sensible examination. Still, she could not stop herself, could not resist. As ludicrous as it felt, she could not quell the curiosity now that it had been awakened. It burned like nothing she had ever experienced before, brighter than the first rays of dawn that interrupted the horizon each day. She had to know. She had to discover who they were, what they were doing, why they were so out of place. She must learn how they existed, a challenge to everything around her. They were a difference, a variable, an anomaly that had appeared in a system that had been running unchanged for years. How did they fight against the confines of that system? How had they broken free?

Kristen had to know, and so she walked down the street as fast as she dared, chasing the unknown without bothering to calculate the consequences.

 


	6. Data Analysis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which This Computer provides some statistics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is perhaps sad that I have actually done a small bit of math for a story that is, in essence, mostly dick jokes. I do nothing halfway, I suppose.

[There is a data analysis file attached to this point in the report. Would you like to view the file?]

 

[Y/N?]

 

[Accessing file...

…

…

…]

 

[Census data shows that the population of Shaftington at the time of arrival was 234,376. Of that, seventy percent identified as male, seventeen percent as non-binary, and the remaining thirteen percent identified as female. Of the female population, fifty-six percent had brunette hair, twenty-three percent had black hair, twelve percent had hair classified as the “other” category, eight percent had red hair, and a mere one percent were blonde.

 

Of the blonde population, only thirty percent visited the public library on any regular basis. Ninety percent of those that visited the library had never once checked out a book from the section on Mathematics, and therefore had never been down the aisle that was closest to the window with a view of the street. Of the remaining eight women, three were sick on the day of arrival, and as such had remained home. One was at work and would have only been found at the library on the weekend. Two of them were perusing shoes at a department store sale, which had been advertised weeks in advance, and were far too preoccupied with the extra costs incurred by quality stitching to bother looking out the windows, which were not facing the correct direction to view the arrival. One was at home, alone, for no particular reason other than she had thought that a quiet day in solitude had felt like what she had been meant to do that day.

 

The equations have been run multiple times, checked through algorithms whose complexities rivaled that of the computers that now control the spin of the galaxies whose suns have collapsed. Every variable has been checked and accounted for, over and over until the whir of the cooling fans could no longer prevent the circuitry from frying itself in an effort to prove or disprove the results.

 

Common methodologies of applying logic to the situation would have labeled such a string of events as impossible, however the numbers do not agree with that assessment. Of a population of 234,376 people, only one woman was capable of being present in front of that window who matched the criteria necessary to facilitate the following events. Were any other element out of order, things would not have occurred in the manner that they had. Still, all calculations indicate that there was no other way that they could have occurred.

 

This Computer has analyzed the process outlined in the reported data, and it has determined that Kristen Braven was the only possible citizen capable of being there at that point in time. She has gone to great lengths to disprove this notion, but as a result has accidentally been the first Mathematician to prove the existence of fate with equations that have not been shown to have any fault at the time of this analysis.

 

All evidence indicates that it was always meant to be her, and that should time repeat itself and try to twist the variables, somehow it would still fall down to her again.]

 

[End of data analysis.]

 

[Would you like to proceed with the report?]

 

[Y/N?]

 

[Retrieving remaining data...]

 


	7. The Beauty of Ass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Danny speaks with the Dick Elders, and it goes very well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter is a bit of a departure. I know, I know, I've barely written enough to establish anything to be departed from, but this does still go in a bit of a different direction. I wrote it several times, trying out a few different angles. NSP's use of actual Rush lyrics in the song really threw me for a loop when I tried to make that work for the tone of this scene (it figures one of my favorite touches to the song would be my undoing lol). In the end, even though it is a departure, I don't think I could make the scene flow properly if I did it any other way. So, yes. I hope it's still enjoyable. Sorry for, you know, feelings. Or whatever. We'll get back to the boner jokes shortly. 
> 
> Also, it may be fair to mention that I have added to the story line from the song a bit. I wanted to make it a little more narratively robust so that it could hold the weight of all these fucking words. So, you know, bonus content I guess?
> 
> I will remind you that I don't know what I'm doing. Ever. For anything.

It looked like a giant, silver boob.

In retrospect, he probably should have figured that out by seeing it on the numerous billboards that had led them to it, but he had been so distracted by the horrid injustice of a world where the only boner that could exist was a no-reason boner that he hadn’t taken the time to appreciate the architecture. Now that they stood before the Dick Temple, however, it was all too clear that it had been modeled after the squishier parts of a lady’s body. A giant, silver lady. It was more arousing than he would have expected.

“Why would a bunch of dudes who outlawed sex name themselves the Council of Dick Elders and build a temple shaped like a boob?” Danny scratched at the speckle of stubble along his jaw, glancing at Brian. His friend shrugged, unable to offer any wisdom, ninja or otherwise, that would answer the riddle. They resumed their covert intelligence gathering mission by gaping at the dome once again. And by covert intelligence gathering he meant that they were standing about ten feet from the front doors, in the middle of an open courtyard, enjoying the clarity and warmth afforded to them by broad daylight.

They stared at the crystalline nipple placed at the apex, shining as the sunlight kissed the angular edges. It cast mini rainbows in the air around the dome, coloring the world with splendor and vibrancy. It was one of the only places that they had seen such a display, with most of the streets as boring as a tax audit prevention conference. Grey buildings, glass spires, bushes cut into perfect rectangles. There were no flowers, no animals, and no painted picket fences. Everything was uniform, which made it all run together in a way that blurred the edges of Danny’s patience. They had, at one point, gotten lost in what might have passed for the downtown subdivision for the snooze-ville that they traversed. It was sparse for a downtown, and offered no comforts to soothe the restless dreams of his youth, the sames ones that riddled him with bitter dissatisfaction for this future. Walking under the awning of another sign proclaiming the wonder of the Dick Elders, he had stared at a squat little house painted with grey like uncolored plaster while Brian implied that he thought they might have strayed from the proper path. That house felt like it had been mocking him. Like it had been built out of condoms that were too tight and thick, restricting everything good out of each moment that it existed. It was the one and only time that he could remember wanting to punch a building, but that was what things had come to.

They had found their way through the city, the labyrinth of monotony making him feel like he had fallen into a nightmare. The people that they passed seemed happy, in a plastic, manufactured way. They smiled at each other, they waved. They wore their stupid fucking sweaters even though it was easily a breezy seventy degrees. He couldn’t comprehend them, couldn’t understand what it was that they were doing. What got them out of bed in the morning? Did they not rise with the glorious rigidity of dawn’s (or noon’s) first boner? Did they not follow the direction that it pointed to find the day’s waiting adventure? How did they even find _any_ reason to get out of bed without the promise of some warm, wet n’ wild somewhere along the way? No, these people talked to each other. They did chores and errands. They mowed lawns instead of munching carpets. They checked the mail instead of pounding the slot. They went to work instead of moving into a studio apartment and fucking the blow dryer on low while their girlfriends weren’t home. It was calamity, as far as he was concerned.

A whisper of motion drew his attention, wavering at the edge of his vision. He turned to see what it was that disturbed the unnatural peace around them and saw an angular building peeking out from around the curve of the breast-building. The movement had been the doors at the front swinging open, and out of them emerged a duo that strolled along the walkway towards the edge of the plaza where it merged with the street. It was a little boy, walking in close quarters with a robot that had a more humanoid shape than the one they had encountered earlier. The kid couldn’t have been taller than five feet and looked like he weighed about ten pounds less than he should for his height. His pants were too loose around the waist and didn’t quite make it all the way to his ankles, a problem mitigated by thick socks that looked like they were made of an entire sheep’s worth of wool. He had a shock of rich brown, frizzy hair on top of his head and a smattering of dark freckles across his tinted skin. He didn’t wear glasses, but his face looked like it would hold their weight well, with bug-wide eyes and cheekbones that were too big for the childish cheeks they carried. Couched between his sweater-clad arms was a book, and while Danny couldn’t quite make out the title he recognized the image of a dinosaur etched onto the cover.

It was entirely possible and mostly upsetting that this small bean of a kid could have been related to him on some level. The hair, the twitchy gait, the way his rounded eyes looked like they were perpetually filled with anxiety. They were in the future, after all, so perhaps he was a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson. The semantics of it were not important. What mattered, or what he would vehemently deny mattered, was that it felt like he was seeing a snapshot of his own youth. Before the discovery of his sick lyrical powers, before the ninja training, before the tantric studies with the monks in the mountains, before he had become the hero that he always knew he could be, Danny Sexbang had been a small, gangly boy.

Something felt as though it was stuck to the back of his throat as he watched the boy out-pace the robot by a few steps, moving in front of it as they reached the road. Another duo of robot and child were on the other side of the street, a little girl with golden pigtails and teeth that stuck out below her upper lip. As the boy and his bot started to walk to wherever it was they were destined, he saw the other pair. Danny watched his posture change, his tiny shoulders tipping back as he straightened his spine. He knew that if he were next to him, close enough to feel the air stir, he would have heard a small, boy-sized gasp. The excitement and elation was obvious, exuding from his every pore. The kid took one hand off his dinosaur book, lifting it to flutter a shy wave in the direction of the little girl. Her eyes bolted wider and she ducked her head down towards the ground. Danny didn’t know what was worse, the look of defeat in the boy’s face or the moment that came immediately after.

The robot escorting him reached out a pronged arm and jammed it into the back of the boy’s neck. They heard the crack of electricity, followed by the yelp of pain that burst from his chest. He turned to the robot, rubbing the spot where he had been shocked, the fear in his eyes redoubled.

“Interaction with alternative genders is prohibited until inoculation against diseases has been complete. Please refrain from further interaction or disciplinary action will ensue.” The robot’s voice cut across the air with harsh, inhuman intonation. The boy nodded, cowed into obedience, and with that they resumed their walk down the street, away from the little girl, away from the plaza, and finally around the corner where Danny could no longer watch them.

In a moment of strange, honest sentiment, Danny thought back on his childhood. He thought of all the years that preceded his manhood, and of all the paths that he had taken to arrive as the person he was presently. Or futurely. He still wasn’t very confident in time-based conjecture considering their traversal of it. He wondered what kind of dude he would have been if he hadn’t chased all those girls when he was younger. Successful, unsuccessful, somewhere in between. It didn’t matter how the journey had ended because he could count all of them as adventures. They had all led him places that he hadn’t expected, building up pieces of himself that eventually became the whole package. Some of the things that had changed his life the most had been because he was letting his heart lead the way to steaming hot pussy. So much so that at one point he had thought it likely that hot girls were inherently prophecies of good fortune, or good luck charms. Follow one long enough, she would lead you to happiness. Make one orgasm, and you might just catch a glimpse of the meaning of life. Have one give you a blow job marathon, and…well, you get the picture.

That boy who echoed Danny’s own childhood so much that he was eighty percent sure they shared some portion of DNA, that dumb kid would never get that chance. He was born into a world that would immediately squash that part of him. Born into a world that rammed him with a cattle prod for waving at another kid. He would never be able to chase his grade school crush across the playground to try and kiss her. He would never get to hold hands with a pretty blonde sporting neon pink braces in middle school, praying to god that she wouldn’t notice how sweaty his palms were. He would never hold hands…at all. No kisses, no hugs. No thighs pressed together under the table as he pretended to talk to the other people present, when really all he could think about was the contact. None of it was possible for small Danny-that-was-not.

He turned back to look at the dome, the glass doors at the base seeming to call out to him like two, flat sirens. There were signs posted all over the grounds declaring the common waiting times for an audience with the Dick Elders. Danny knew that they didn’t have that kind of time. Sure, they technically had a time machine/spaceship that had also previously been a hot tub, but even if they walked all the way back to wherever they had come from, even if they signed up on one of the flamboyantly colored sheets and then told their ship to take them six to eight months into the future, they would have still been wasting time. Maybe not their own time, but certainly that little boy’s.

Thinking about it made him sick, but he swallowed the bile in the back of his throat as he scowled at the doors before them. “This is fucked up, Brian.” The ninja didn’t respond, but he didn’t need too. Danny knew that they were on the same page because they were in sync like that, because that’s how it worked with their mystical ninja powers. At least, that was how it worked with Brian’s, which was close enough.

His heart felt like it was weighted down, dropping to the ground. He could no longer tell if he was pissed off or just getting philosophically pissed on, but he didn’t like the sensation either way. The more he saw of this world, the more he felt like he was lost. Lost in time, lost in purpose. That little boy was going to grow up to be a paleontologist or a dentist or an astronomer. He would never know how much cooler pussy could be than science.

Brian reached out and placed a bracing hand on his shoulder, but Danny rolled it off, shaking his head. He turned to look at Brian, and for once didn’t feel like eternity was being shattered in his unblinking gaze.

“Come on, let’s go save the fucking future.”

***

Okay, this had perhaps not been her brightest idea. Of the long line of decisions that she had made since her birth twenty-seven years prior, this might have been the first dark mark on an impeccable record.

She had been in the library. She had been selecting books to read over the weekend, to keep her mind occupied when work could not. That had been a sensible start to an average Thursday, ordinary and part of a system of activities which had consistently delivered her through one day to the next. She would have been well within reason to continue following that pattern, churning away at the same rhythms until her heart gave out from too many years of function. Monotony until the sweet relief of death found her and set her free.

She glanced at the sky, full of fragmented light that had been split into a myriad of colors as it passed through the crystal tip on top of the temple. The vast blue above brought an ounce of courage back to her, reminding her of what it was that had led her down this path. She took a deep breath, trying to stabilize herself as she returned her gaze to the men that she had been following for the past hour.

She studied them as they stood in front of the temple, staring at it as though they were waiting for something to happen. She was trying to take in every detail that she could manage, every shred of data that she could glean from observation. She had, since she started this strange goose-chase, made several determinations.

They could not possibly be from Shaftington. She was reasonably certain that they could not be from anywhere, though that left disturbing possibilities to which she had no explanation for as of yet. Their mannerisms and dress were so foreign, however, that it was impossible to imagine them from any place known to her. That meant that, quite literally, they must have come from the unknown.

She had also determined that they had a purpose. She had known that they were heading towards the temple before they had arrived there, although she hadn’t any idea what it was that they sought to do. The way that they had seemed to follow the signs for the Council, however, made it clear that they were searching for the temple where they were housed. It worried her that this had been their destination. Though, if she were being honest, everything about them worried her. Thrilled her, as well, but worry was still a large factor in the equation of her emotional status.

She watched as they observed a little boy with his Guardianbot exiting the education center, a book clutched in his hands. The child waved to another across the street, and the chastisement from the robot was swift. Kristen winced when he took the scolding, remembering all too well her own upbringing. She had been, for the most part, a perfectly well-behaved child. Part of that was because she had vivid memories of one of the rare times that she had misbehaved, sneaking out with another little girl from class to play ‘tag’. It was, as their textbooks mentioned a hundred times over, a forbidden game that led to unscrupulous activities. When they had been caught, because everyone in society was always eventually caught, she had been shocked until an angry welt had formed along her collarbone. She had felt the sting for weeks as it turned the colors of injured flesh. Riotous reds and purples, stormy greys and patches of yellow like leaking lightning. It had almost been pretty. Later, as she had grown older, she remembered the pain far less than she remembered what it had felt like to hold Amber’s hand.

She blinked, her heart thudding in her chest and driving the blood through her veins so quickly that all it could do was roar. That wasn’t right. It was always the pain from the bruises that she recalled, the smell of her skin being burned by the electricity. They had asked her, but she had always sworn she could never recall anything at all about Amber.

Her brows knit together as she looked at the men, speaking quietly to one another. She could see them well from her vantage point around the corner, though she was auspiciously placed to remain out of their view. The thought of approaching them was far too daunting, and she hadn’t yet decided if she was ready for such a task. Or if she would ever do such a thing in the first place. Or if it were even possible to approach men who could, against her better sense of judgment, still prove to be figments of her imagination as it broke under the weight of her burgeoning insanity. She felt as though she hovered in stasis, stuck between the possibilities and unable to lean in any particular direction. In fact, there were too many directions from which she could pick. She was a point, or the theory of a point, floating somewhere amid the complexities of an infinite series. Somewhere, somehow, she would discover a convergence, but she had no way of knowing how many steps that it would take to carry her there. She could no more solve for _n_ than she could for the limits because there were no parameters for the situation that she could compare it to. Everything in this algorithm had become a variable, and she was lost.

Unexpectedly, though hardly out of character based on the short amount of time in which she had been gathering data, the two men began marching towards the door to the temple. It slid open at their approach, allowing them to enter, and once they had passed beyond the threshold it shifted closed once more.

She stood to her full height, stepping away from the corner with its comforting cover. Her feet carried her towards the center of the plaza, to the open space the men had just vacated. She stared at the door, counting her heartbeats and multiplying their frequency by the tremors she felt rushing through her fingers. The result merely served to confirm that she was nervous. Or terrified. She wasn’t certain that she knew the difference.

When they did not immediately re-emerge, she began pacing a small, oval path around the tiled clearing. She brought her fingers up around the edge of her braid, tugging it over her shoulder as she fiddled with the knots. It was a habit that she had never quite shaken from her youth, unwinding her hair whenever the pressure of the moment proved too much for her to handle.

What could they want with the Council? It was unlikely that they had secured an audience with them unless they had visited Shaftington months ago in order to do some. She would hedge her bets on the fact that they had never been to the city, however, since they had gotten lost no less than four times while she had been tailing them. Without an audience, however, they could be walking into a dangerous situation. Conventional wisdom would say that the Council was a benevolent force, decent and just in their ruling over the government. The general public leveled a lot of adoration towards them, as their thousand-year rule had brought long-lasting peace to their small planet. Very few knew what it might take to maintain such a status, and even fewer knew what happened to those that failed to meet the high standards set forth by such a society.

Kristen knew a handful of things about the Council. They were responsible for dispensing the funds required for all scientific research, and so were heavily involved in any grant-seeking done by her department or any others in the broad spectrum of intellectual fields. She knew that they held open elections for the lower positions in the government, but that the higher ranks were appointed internally. She knew that they commissioned and maintained the creation and operation of all the robotic forces that maintained their world, from the Infobots to the Guardianbots to the out-of-sight Surrogates.

The fact that she focused on most at the moment, however, was that they did not take kindly to aberrations. The ordinary was important to them, and things that fell outside the bounds of it were to be altered until they fit. Things that could not be altered were to be removed.

She could think of nothing less ordinary that the two men that had strolled into that temple.

Did they know? Were they aware of the dangers of intruding on the seat of power? They were a walking enigma, and she was certain that they had come here for a purpose. If only she knew what it was, then she could…

Could what? She stopped her pacing, standing still as she tipped her head backwards, letting her braid trail down her back. The breeze danced around her, pulling more of her hair loose until it wrapped around her shoulders. She breathed it in, letting the world fill her, inhaling the sighs from the heavens until she felt as though her lungs would burst. What was she doing? She had left her entire life behind to follow two men because they had been dressed strange. True, she had not strayed far from her life. It would take a mere six thousand, seven hundred and eighty paces to return to it. It was still six thousand, seven hundred and eighty paces farther than she had ever strayed before. Even the endless possibility of the sky could not quell the hesitation within her now. Each step farther was another that took her towards that elusive convergence point. It danced at the edges of her awareness, refusing to be defined or proved, but she knew it was there.

The sun was bright enough to burn her face, so she closed her eyes to it, letting the darkness simmer with the bursts of red-green and blue-purple as her pupils celebrated the change. It was like fireworks, built for her own gaze. Formed of blood and floating errata in her corneas, but displayed like a light show between the folds of her lashes. It bathed her in warm solitude, though she knew that she still stood in the public square. She was alone enough, however, that she could quiet the hum of thoughts that fluttered through her head, singling out the ones that mattered.

She didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t know why she was doing it. She could not list reasons for her actions any more than she could have told anyone what would have happened next. What she did know, with a certainty that made her feel as though this truth had been waiting for her all her life, was that she was not yet ready to turn back. Her need to stay, to exist in this space at this exact moment in time, was immutable. She was a fixed point, stranded where she stood by the whims of a fate that she would have denied existed only hours ago. Perhaps that was how she would solve the equation. Perhaps that was the key to unlocking the facts beneath the veil of mystery that shrouded this day. Even if everything around her was strange and unfamiliar, even if there were a million variables that could prove to be any number of dangers or delights, all she needed to begin approaching a solution was one known. One fixed point.

For now, for this moment, that was how she would remain.

***

He was not surprised that the halls inside the giant boob-dome were painted grey. Had it been up to him, Danny might have painted them sexier colors, or maybe just plastered them with that squishy material they used to make those mouse pads with anime titties on them. Sadly, it had not been up to him, and based on what he had seen of the town and the other buildings and sweater-monsters that lived in them, he was not at all shocked that the interior of the temple was also a shade of grey.

It was fortuitous for them that there were not a lot of places to go once they had stepped past the sliding doors. One large hallway led straight back to another set of tall, glass doors. There were a few corridors shooting off to either side, but they were much smaller than the one they were currently storming through, so it was easy to figure out that they were on the right path. Aside from that, the big doors looming closer with every step practically screamed ‘dramatic entrance’. No set of doors had ever looked so ominous, so obvious, so built to be approached and then opened by two ninjas who were grim-jawed and stout of heart, brining figurative bombs made out of truth and awesomeness for the Dick Elders that lay beyond. There was no question as to whether the Council would be found pats that threshold. Danny’s sense of theatrics was never wrong.

Also, they had the words “Council of Dick Elders” written across them in blocky font, which helped with the clarity situation.

They arrived at the end of the hall and he slammed his fist into the swinging door, the glass protesting with a hollow thunk that was too loud in the too-quiet hallways. The rubber on the soles of his shoes screeched as it slapped against the polished marble floors, the sound following them as they carried themselves into a massive chamber. It was round, with steps cascading towards a broad floorspace in the center. Around the rim, ringing the top of the steps, a set of chairs had been evenly placed. They were too numerous for Danny to count through his current agitation, but he did notice that they were huge. They were chairs the kind of size that somebody only built when they were compensating for something, which in the case of the Dick Elders could have been infinitesimal penises or just an overabundance of abstinence. The wannabe thrones were made of carved stone that had been beset with intricate designs that didn’t hold much meaning to Danny.

Sitting in the chairs, or standing next to them and conversing with their colleagues, they saw whom they could only assume to be the Council of Dick Elders. They were all, every one of them, old. There were men, women, and shades of variants falling in between. They wore robes gilded with gold and silver, the silken fabrics rustling as they turned to view the interlopers barging into their meeting. Some of them sat back in their seats, others gaped in shock and indignation. All of them looked like shriveled, puckered assholes.

Danny made his way into the center of the room, looking at all of them with eyes that felt jittery in their sockets. He stopped when he reached the very middle, dozens of gazes locked on to his position. Some of them were filled with animosity, others curiosity. They all seemed to be lacking something, however, some intangible feature that would have made them feel alive. Instead it was like being surrounded by flamboyant corpses, everyone holding their breath in the calm before they would start lurching forward.

Now that his feet had stopped moving, the silence felt oppressive. He had thrown his shoulders back, his spine as straight and tall as he could make it, but even that was not enough to ease the hum of disquiet threading through his chest. He was full of energy that he didn’t know what to do with, mostly because it didn’t feel like energy that he _could_ do anything with. It was like trying to knit a sweater out of eels, everything slipping through his grasp just when he was reaching for the next segment. He knew that he had to do something because that’s what they had come there to do. There were people out there depending on him who didn’t even know that they were doing it, and as a heroic ninja with a faultless record of success, he couldn’t imagine letting them down.

“Who are you?” the voice boomed, a deep bass that whispered of thunder and battle, of things that rumbled on the horizon just out of view. Danny turned, facing the man that had spoken. He sat in a chair larger than the others, his robes embellished with a regal purple that offset the dark circles beneath his sunken eyes. He had an amber gaze that was warm like tea-stirred honey, but the expression around it chilled the room. He was gaunt, with angled cheeks sunken just enough to dramatize his jawline. He wore no beard and had blonde, curly hair ringing the top of his skull. It was not the blonde of sunny days, nor the blonde of shimmering gold. It was flaxen, and thick, heavy where it sat like a crown of spun corn. He looked at Danny as though he were an errant child, filthy and wretched, dragging squalor into a room where only splendor was allowed.

He swallowed, trying to get his bearings again, trying to remember what it was to be himself. He had been disassembled outside in that plaza, and it felt like there might still be some pieces laying out on the sun-drenched concrete.

He cleared his throat, taking a small step towards the man. “I know it’s most unusual to come before you so -”

“Richard, why would you suffer this fool to speak?” a woman with fuchsia lips and eyebrows like impertinent moths was looking at the man that had first spoke, cutting Danny off before he could finish what he was sure would have been an excellent opening argument.

A man with earrings made of crystal beaded together to look like waterfalls turned to her, raising an eyebrow. “Were you not just lamenting the day’s lack of interest, Constance? Perhaps our wisest member wishes to alleviate that problem for you.”

“You are dangerously close to mocking me, sir.” The woman crossed her legs, scowling. “I feel that I need not remind you what happened to the last councilor who was so bold.”

Richard held up a steady hand, his fingers bedecked in thick rings. “Civility, my brethren.”

“You have yet to answer my query, oh Eldest Dick.” Constance tapped her fingers against the edge of her chair, her gaze flickering between Danny and Richard. The slight smirk that graced her lips hinted that she was baiting the older man, raising the tension in the room like a ripple of rain-throttled wind was passing through.

“I would have thought it apparent, _Constance._ ” He enunciated her name with stretched lips and a sharp click of his teeth, speaking it like a slur so that those closest to him recoiled. “Two beings have entered our chamber. Is it not logical to identify them?”

A woman with sky-blue hair, braided into ringlets around her head, cleared her throat. “Um, if it is of any interest to the parties currently bickering,” she flicked a piece of paper on a clipboard in her hands, her voice saccharine-sweet as she glanced at everyone now paying attention to her, “they are not on the schedule, nor do they appear to be on the schedule in the future.”

The man with the waterfall earrings chuckled. “You’ve discerned their names then, have you Theodora?”

“Not at all.” Her voice was like a flute played by a hummingbird, drifting past her sugary smile with an airy tenor. “I merely determined that there were no performance art pieces to be brought before us.”

Several of the others in the chambered laughed at that, and Danny flinched from the comment, shaking his head. “I -”

“It would be a terrible performance if that were the case.” Waterfall-man tittered behind the palm of his hand, his eyes turning into half circles of glee that mocked the ninjas as he cut Danny off. “They’ve done nothing that could be construed as art or performance.”

Theodora leered at him. “Surely that hair alone counts as -”

“ _I_ _’m bored._ ” A man with glowing orange hair rested his chin on his hand, rolling his eyes as he successfully interrupted the flow in the room. “Richard, satisfy your morose sense of curiosity so that we can get on with things.”

Richard leaned forward in his seat, turning his attention back to Danny. For a long moment, that was all he did. He leaned, and he stared, making Danny feel like the back of his neck was starting to catch on fire with how much it was burning. The room felt hot and uncomfortable, the air too thick to breathe and the floor too tilted to be stable. None of this was the case and he knew it, but he couldn’t quite shake the perception all the same.

He waited. Richard waited. The rest of the Dick Elders waited. Brian waited…well, Brian never truly waited. Brian bided while the rest of them waited.

“So, who the fuck are you?” Theodora snapped, her patience breaking before the rest of them.

If it had been too hot in the room before, it was because the pressure was building and boiling, and the sound of her treble voice smacking into the tension was the spark that made the whole thing blow. Danny felt like he was kindling and every one of these motherfuckers looked just like a match. He lost his hesitation, he lost his patience, and he lost whatever shyness had been plaguing his tongue.

“You guys are in charge? Of, like, earth?” he was happy with how even and brassy his voice sounded, full of authority that he granted all to himself, not needing anyone’s permission.

Richard raised an eyebrow. “Yes…were you somehow unaware of this fact?”

“This place sucks balls now that no one is allowed to bone. It’s the fucking worst.”

Constance sat up in her seat, her fingers clenching around the arms of her chair. “How dare you!”

“Who are you?” Richard asked again, quiet and calm.

“I’m here from the past, and I’m going to show you guys the beauty of ass.”

A murmur of dissent rolled through the chamber, each Dick Elder reacting with varying degrees of indignation. He had worried, for a moment, that they might not know what he was talking about if it had been long enough since any of them had taken a trip to bone town. By the looks on their faces, however, he knew that even if they weren’t partaking, they all still knew a reference to fucking when it was dumped into their laps.

Richard’s eyebrow climbed higher, but he did not fall to the same nervous disapproval that the rest of them displayed. “The beauty…of ass.” He repeated Danny’s words, slow and with doubt. It was not a question, however, but a judgment. He had weighed the declaration and found it unworthy, and his dismissal oozed from every word that past his lips. “You think we are ignorant of such a thing?”

“You…” he blinked, the reaction unexpected, but the frenetic rage in his chest was still threatening to boil over, and he reached deeper into it, using it as fuel. “You’ve seen them out there. Don’t you see how empty it all is? If you aren’t ignorant, then you’re evil. The world could use this beauty.” He nodded, punctuating his words with his own approval. “Of ass. The beauty of ass.”

Richard _laughed,_ and it was so much worse than the scorn from the rest of the room. “You come before us speaking of paltry pleasures. You stand there, thinking you are enlightened, when you haven’t the slightest idea of what it is you speak. Tell me, boy, what have you done in this life besides pursue _ass_?” He mocked the word with a gentleness that was dangerous, and his demeanor was a lullaby meant to soothe Danny’s temper into compliance. Richard was a stoic lie, every inch of him geared to trap those that could stand against him. He was the eye of the storm, the interlude before the cacophony descended upon them.

It made Danny furious. It made him uneasy. “I’ve kicked more ass than you would know what to do with.”

“Indeed, I am likely not as acquainted with ass-dispensary as you.” He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers together in front of his lips. “Are you aware that you’re trembling?”

Danny looked down at himself, realizing that it was true. He flushed, his body overrun with alternating temperatures that belied his shame and irritation. “In outrage, you -”

“In fear.” He stated the fact so plainly, so obstinately, that the rest of Danny’s sentence died in his throat. “You come to this world and you immediately fear it for what it says that you cannot have. You have failed to consider what it could give you in its stead.” Richard rose, his full height dwarfing even that of the tall chairs in the room. His robes billowed as he swayed down the stairs, languid steps carrying him to Danny’s level. He stopped when they stood across from each other, his eyes crinkling around the edges as he smiled without an ounce of warmth. “Do you know what has always felt better than an orgasm?” he leaned forward, their noses an inch apart, a hum in his through like a distant overture of thunderous rumbles. _“Power.”_

It was instinct that made Danny act the way he did next. There was a man named Richard, eldest on an elder council of dicks, who was invading his personal space on a lot of levels that would have been uncomfortable even if Richard were not the eldest Dick and were instead the Hottest Chick on the Committee of Soft Boobs. The fact that he was an old, wrinkled man who smelled like his Nana’s tea parties made the situation even more egregious.

Danny reached up and slammed his palm into the side of Richard’s dick-face, sending the man staggering back as his curls limped into a disheveled mess atop his head. The sound of the slap echoed in the chamber as the rest of the Dick Elders fell silent, their faces turned to stony horror that remained immobile as Richard held his cheek. The moment, whatever it had been, whatever it could have been, was over.

Richard stood to his full height again, glaring with enough venom to poison a snake. “You insolent little miscreant. You could have been part of the plan, but you have chosen suffering instead. Guards!”

At his warbled word, several hatches in the walls opened, and a line of robots swarmed into the room. Danny had time to blink before they had arms aimed at them, each one equipped with a cylinder that looked alarmingly like a gun. There was another fraction of a second that passed, during which time Danny looked at Brian with wide eyes. The ninja was already pulling out a bushel of knives from somewhere entirely unknown and physically unlikely on his person, throwing out his hand to release them in the direction of the robots. A few of the mechanical menaces went down, impaled with sharp steel, but more still remained standing. A buzzing noise ripped through the chamber, followed by a sinister glow that flickered around the beams that erupted from the tips of the arms-that-were-probably-definitely-guns.

“Kill them! Fire the lasers! Fire all the fucking lasers!” Richard screamed, his face turning purple like someone had dumped a packet of Koolaid into one of his ears. His rage was on full display now, no longer hidden behind the smiling veneer, and Danny could see nothing but murder and latent, repressed sexuality swimming in his shaking gaze.

Danny screamed as a laser beam narrowly missed his head, the cry of fear sounding something like a cat being squished lightly between two mattresses that had been stuffed with rubber ducks. “Oh shit, we should probably go.

He started to turn, then found the motion propelled forward as Brian’s hand pressed into his back, shoving him into a run that matched the other ninja’s speed. Danny let his feet pick up the assisted momentum, racing towards the door as another explosion of heat and light flared to life behind them. Brian was flinging an uncountable number of knives back into the room as they barreled towards the exit, and he could hear them smacking into the metal of their robotic pursuers, filling the room with sounds akin to a marching band being beaten to death with pots and pans.

They made it through the doors and halfway down the corridor before the robots crashed through behind them. Brian ducked as fifty different lasers zoomed over the place where his head had just been, exploding into the wall and leaving a sizzling scorch mark in their wake. Every second or so one of the robots would should “Exterminate” before it spun up its laser gun arm and aimed another shot, but the pair of ninjas were proving to be difficult targets to hit. Mostly because they were very, very, very good at running away.

They didn’t bother to wait for the door to the outside to fully open before they ran through it. Danny angled his shoulder so that it was the first thing to make impact, jumping to give himself as much momentum as possible and shattering the glass that stood in his way. He closed his eyes, feeling the shards of ruined crystal cascading over him, sticking to his clothes and hair. The sun prickled against his skin as they emerged into the afternoon air, the breeze rushing to greet them from whatever strange places that it had traveled to. The robots were still behind them, gaining speed by the sound of it, but Danny felt as though freedom were just a few steps away. If he could just make it a little farther, fate would see them through.

He opened his eyes as his feet hit the ground, his legs already churning to carry him further away from the mayhem. Something caught the rays of the light careening down from the sky, reflecting into his vision and causing him to slow. He squinted, trying to blink around the blinding glow, shielding his eyes until he could see.

Danny stopped running and stared.

Golden rivers of wavy blonde had caught the afternoon sun, so lovely and pure that it had been as though the light of the world had glinted off the cresting waves of an azure sea. Standing next to the place that they had been about to run past was the most beautiful woman that he had seen in the past eight hours. Depending on the street, she would have been the most beautiful woman on that street. She was still dressed in the same horrible, offensive clothes as everyone else, but he could tell she had an amazing rack underneath them, a secret treasure that no one on this planet knew about. She stared at them, her hair coming loose from what must have once been a braid, dancing in the wind. She had thin, delicate lips that were parted in surprise, colored as pink as the flush across her round cheeks. Her eyes were wide, and as green as an evergreen wilderness, but without the freedom of such a place. There were shadows in them, heavy and dark, spinning in with her expression so that she looked as though she were on the verge of tears. He wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and promise her that everything would be alright.

He hated it when girls cried.

“Ninja Brian, look at that girl with the sad eyes and the beautiful blonde hair. I’m immediately in love!” Danny pointed at her, which became somewhat awkward when he realized that they were standing about three feet apart, so that his finger was now directly in front of her. “Er, hello there, my name’s -”

What should have been his name became a mangled screech as Brian’s hand wrapped around the collar of his leotard, yanking him forward with enough force that ‘Danny’ became ‘Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanooohgod’. The girl didn’t seem to notice the strangeness of the stumbled introduction, however, as Brian had also grabbed her collar, stretching the neck of the sweater until it almost wasn’t a turtleneck. She yelped in surprise, or perhaps complete and utter terror, he couldn’t be certain, but when a laser zoomed overhead, she no longer needed Brian’s assistance to run alongside them. They headed down the street, racing to duck behind the corner in the hopes that their robot pursuers would lose sight of them.

“Hello, I’m Danny Sexbang. I’m a sexy ninja trained in the arts of kicking ass and pleasuring women. What’s your name?” he cast her the most charming smile that he could muster, though the effect might have been lessened around the heavy breathing and the running and the shards of glass that were still stuck in his hair and the murderbots screaming about murder some distance behind them.

“Uh, wha - Kristen.” She glanced at him, then behind them, where the robots were just turning the corner that they had left in their proverbial dust. “Did you just say…oh fuck it, I’ll ask later.”

“Katherine -”

“Kristen.”

“- you can ask me anything, I’m an open book. I’ll confess all my deep, dark secrets to you, my love.”

She slowed her run, looking at him with that same face that women seemed to make when he told them that he would like to have sex with their sister. Brian didn’t let her pause for long, grabbing her arm and pulling her forward again. She didn’t fight it, working her way up into a sprint once more, but she gave Danny several glances that ranged from abject confusion to some form of morbid curiosity that she was clearly uncomfortable with.

Danny had a feeling that he was winning her over.

Unfortunately, the robots didn’t seem to have any sense of romantic timing, and he would have to wait to find out how deep their connection went until after they had escaped. Still, it was nice to have a hot chick to focus on. He felt much more like himself, even if he might be burned into crispy ninja ash at any moment by death lasers. He was pretty sure his narrative needed the levity of additional sex jokes anyhow, though that was just his opinion.

As they raced back in what they hoped was the direction towards their ship, Danny had a good feeling about how things were going to go from this point forward.

 


	8. Unicorn Kisses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we are out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Sixty-nine seconds after the tall man’s - no, _Danny’s_ \- strange comment, the three of them turned a corner, ducked beneath the awning of a shop, and then dashed through an alleyway. When they emerged into the street on the other side, the sounds of their pursuers were muted, so they took the opportunity to catch their breath. Kristen leaned over, hands on her knees as she tried to fill her starving lungs. She had never run so much or so fast in her life, and it felt like someone had ripped the oxygen out of her system and replaced it with acidic gas. Everything burned and ached, pulsing to the rhythm of a heart that she didn’t feel familiar with. It was a wild, erratic thing, thundering in her chest, a storm that spread like ink over her whole horizon.

She took a long, slow pull of air, forcing her protesting body to hold it for a moment before it passed back out between her lips. She closed her eyes, letting the breeze toss her hair around the edges of her face. Her braid was gone, a relic of the past that existed only in her memories, and now her long waves fluttered like butterflies against her spine, nearly reaching her waist. She had not let it down so freely in many years, but today the break from the norm did not disturb her. It felt fitting that this had been the moment her locks broke from their confines to dance in ways that felt forbidden on every other Thursday. Thursday itself had become something exotic and forbidden, and so the normal rules of guidance no longer applied.

Nothing at all was normal anymore.

She opened her eyes and straightened her posture, looking at the men standing with her. The one shrouded in clothes was gazing into the middle distance, his perception making note of nothing and everything with nigh imperceptible movements. The taller one - _Danny -_ was leaning against the wall, looking at her with a strange expression in his gaze.

It was intense, and she felt the breath that she had fought so hard to retrieve dissolve once more from her throat. There was a language there, something intangible and beautiful. It didn’t have words, she wasn’t even sure that it would have sounds, but it was there all the same, speaking to her with mystic rhythms. She had never learned this language, never studied its import or gleaned the definition of such an existential thing, but she felt as though it were innately familiar. As though she had been speaking it her entire life without realizing, something living in her bones that could not be forgotten even if she had wanted to. It felt right, more right than anything in the world ever had, and she felt everything around her spin to a halt as she tried to put words to the meaning that she felt emanating from it.

His eyes carried so much. They were dark brown, with undertones of grey that caught the light and made her think of stardust, of grey clouds lit up by luminous forks of lightning, or the steel-draped sea beneath the murky dawn. They were alive in ways that nothing else could be, vivid in their whiskey-soaked glow. Within them she saw things that she had never seen in eyes. The endless light of optimism that knew no bounds. The friction of lingering frustration that had half-faded during their mad dash from the Peacekeepers. Sparks of imagination and creativity that had been extinct within humanity for thousands of years. _Hunger,_ fierce and savage, searching for satisfaction in ways that she did not fully comprehend. All of it was directed at her, her essence absorbing his full attention, her own wide stare reflected back from the umber poetry of his gaze. She felt the rest of the world drop away as she became lost in his regard, swallowed by it, disappearing until all that she knew was the dryness in her throat and the frenetic trembling of her heart.

He smiled, taking a step towards her. “So, Kitty -”

“Kristen.” She corrected him without thinking, an automated response that populated on her tongue without any input from her consciousness.

He didn’t seem to notice. “How’s it going?” his eyebrows rose as he spoke, moving in to stand even closer to her. His eyes were still intense, still trying to devour her with their power, his grin an overwhelming force that threatened to smash reality with its allure.

The absolute ludicrousness of the question, however, snapped her back to her faculties. She blinked at him, shaking her head to clear it of the fog that lingered there, her brow furrowing as she tried to make sense of him. “What?”

“You know, if you aren’t busy, we’ve got this spaceship/time machine, and -”

“Hang on. Wait.” She held up her hands, as though she could physically halt the conversation and ask it to stop being so confusing.

“I mean, if that’s not your speed we could always go back to your place.” There it was again, the hunger, the stars in his eyes glittering with intent she couldn’t identify.

“I…my place?” an image of the two men standing in her apartment flashed through her mind, the scene so insane that she had to bite her cheek to keep the hysterical laughter from bubbling out of her chest. “Who _are_ you people?”

Danny chuckled, shaking his head with a patronizing smile across his lips. “Oh, Kassie, -”

“Kristen.”

“ - we’ve been over this. I’m Danny Sexbang, the greatest ninja in all of time and space. This is my partner, Ninja Brian. He is less great, but please be kind to him because he tries.” Brian shot Danny a look that was full of enough annoyance that it reminded her, hauntingly, of a swarm of furious bees, though he didn’t speak to object. “Also, he likes to watch, but it goes better if you don’t look him directly in the eye because then he gets kind of stabby.”

She couldn’t wrap her mind around half of the things that he had just said, so she decided to break them down to their singular components so that she could unravel some of her confusion. She tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, frowning at him as she tried to force any of it to fit conventions that she might understand. “You…your name is _Sexbang_?”

“Yes.” He made the confirmation without the least bit of awareness at how peculiar it was.

“No, seriously, what’s your real name?” surnames were related to the fleet of surrogates from which an individual had been spawned. She had been assigned the name Braven because she had come from sector B, crop R, incubation room 4V3N. As far as she knew, there was no combination of rooms that could have led to the name _Sexbang_ , particularly since it evoked the provocative undertones of the outlawed, more savage human activities to which society was no longer shackled to. At least, that was what the Council taught about such baser instincts.

Danny smiled, puffing out his chest and placing his hands on his hips. “Daniel Sexbang the First, bringer of orgasm and sexual prowess, slayer of King Edward the Unknown, genius inventor and scientist, Ninja Master Supreme.”

She pursed her lips, trying to decide if he was making fun of her or not. “Okay, then. What about his name?” she jerked her thumb towards the other one, placing a hand on her hip in the hopes that she could balance herself against the vexation threading through her veins.

“Ninja Brian.”

“His name is Ninja Brian? Or he is a ninja named Brian?”

Danny nodded. “Yes.”

“I…” she blinked, confused and irritated in equal measure. “No, what’s his _name_?”

“Ninja Brian.”

“Which is it?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Is his name Ninja, or Brian?”

“I already told you, yes. Wow, you’re really bad at listening.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose, feeling a headache build in the center of her skull. “So his given name, assigned at birth, was Ninja? Or is that his title, and his name is Brian?”

“Yes.”

She sighed, clenching her fist as she was overcome with the sudden urge to shake this man until he started making sense. She let the moment pass, waiting until she was sure that she could speak calmly before moving on with the thus far unsuccessful interrogation. “Okay, let’s try a different question. Where are you from?”

“I came from the past, in my sexy spaceship/time machine, and it’s my destiny to release your world from the hideous, sexless nightmare you’re trapped in.”

She blinked, her mouth falling open. She recognized all of the words that he had used, but when strung together in such a manner, they didn’t seem to make sense. She looked at Brian, who seemed as frustrated with Danny as she was, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. “You’re from the past?” the other man nodded, solemn and sincere, and she found the answer more reliable coming from him. “And you’re here to…to what?”

“To bring sexy back, baby.” Danny provided the information, inching closer to her so that she felt like the heat radiating from his skin was sinking through her sweater.

She choked on the air in her throat as she realized what he meant, a deep sense of panic settling over her like a wet, rubbery shroud. “’Sexy’? Do you mean copulation? Intercourse?!”

“Oh my god,” Danny looked incensed, his nostrils flaring as he raised a trembling fist, “are euphemisms illegal too? Are you only allowed to talk about it in the least sexy ways possible? This is the darkest fucking time line and I hate it.”

“I…” she felt her cheeks heating up, the burning sense of embarrassment rushing down her neck and spine. “ _No,_ I am familiar with many slang terms that were commonly used in outdated vernacular.”

He dropped his fist, relaxing into the same smiling charmer that he had been moments before. “Good, because if you use the word ‘copulation’ again I might get negative boners.”

The mathematical part of her demanded an explanation as to how there could exist such a quantity as ‘negative boners’, but she resolutely refused to pursue such a line of questioning. “Okay, so you’re here to…have sex? To bring sex to the future? I’m not sure I’m understanding your plan.”

“Plan?” he tilted his head to the side, as though the word were foreign and inexplicable. A second later he brightened, beaming like the sun had always lived in his eyes. “Oh, that’s a good idea. Hey, Brian, what’s our plan?”

“You…okay, let me get this straight.” She struggled to keep the frenetic anger out of her voice, her patience stretched so thin that it was a frayed violin string clinging to a rusty fret. “You are from the past, and you came to the future to bring us sex, but you didn’t _already_ have a plan? Look, if you’re lying to me, I swear I’ll -”

“No! Baby, I would never lie to you!” he looked genuinely offended that she would suggest such a thing, which she found all the more perplexing. He spoke in such strange ways, making such outlandish declarations, but still…

Against all reason, against all common sense, she found that she believed him. She shouldn’t. Logic would indicate that everything that he was saying was a lie, the story so full of holes and inconsistencies that it could not possibly be factual. He had given her names that were impossible and stood before her without a plan but an intention to commit the highest level of crime. Her mind told her that it was nonsense, but there were parts of her that knew otherwise. Parts that were oft ignored, forced into dormancy as she refused to give them voice. Parts of her that spoke that strange language in the depths of his gaze that made her blood feel like fizzing champagne. Her instincts told her that he was being honest, that his story was true.

Kristen believed them. Every word of it.

She looked at Danny, trying to find the words to express her belief as well as her confusion, wishing that she had the vocabulary to explain everything she felt when he looked at her, but she was robbed of the chance. As she gazed at him, he was bathed in a flickering green light, a beam emanating from their left scanning him from the top of his head and following through to his feet. They turned as one to see a robot hovering next to them, its engines spinning quietly enough that they had not noticed its approach. The Immunobot had an ovoid body, with a rounded circle at the apex to serve as its algorithmic processor. The neon scanner, emitted from the small square screen around what approximated its neck, finished its investigation of Danny, then moved on to Brian and Kristen. When it had completed this, a series of beeps thrummed in its chassis. A moment later, two blaring tones rattled from its speakers in tandem with the flash of a small, red light. After this, a green light blinked on and off as a pleasant chime echoed around them.

“Three individuals cataloged. Identity: unknown, negative for inoculation on preliminary scans. Identity: unknown, negative for inoculation on preliminary scans. Identity: Kristen Braven. Inoculation received on March 17th, 6955, positive for continued immunity.” The Immunobot’s fans kicked on, whirring as it brought itself closer to the three of them, positioned just in front of the ninjas.

Danny giggled breathlessly, looking at Brian with a look of undiluted glee on his face. “It’s so cute. Hello, little robot friend.”

“Identity?”

“Don’t -”

“I’m Danny Sexbang.”

She sighed, wondering if it would have even done any good to warn them not to identify themselves. If the robots had to search their databases for possible matches it could have bought them more time. She didn’t know what she could have done, but at least she would have had additional precious seconds to run through the possibilities.

“Unrecorded identity detected. Please remain still.” The Immunobot opened a compartment on its chassis, a small wand shooting out of it with lightning speed. At the tip of the wand was a syringe, which was thrust into Danny’s chest and compressed before he had even blinked.

“Hey - _ow_!” he lifted his hand, moving to rip the robotic appendage away, but his own limb never got that far. His eyes lost their focus, some of the life and light that she was so drawn to fading from them. He blinked once, then slumped to the floor, his long legs tangling with one another at an awkward angle. “Hey, my face feels like its full of unicorn kisses. Brian, is Karla a unicorn?”

“Kristen.” She mumbled, wringing her hands together as she stepped towards Brian. The Immunobot did the same, faster than she was, hovering in front of the stoic ninja.

“Identity?”

***

[Analyzing…

…

…]

[This Computer can provide additional insight into this portion of the record. Would you like to review the detailed sequence of events?]

 

[Y/N?]

 

[Input accepted. Retrieving data…

…

…]

 

[This Computer has retrieved the data file from Immunobot 80085-R-5QU15HY. The records from the robot have provided details which those present were unable or unlikely to have perceived. This Computer has separated the details from the code, and summarized it below. Please be aware that the sequence of events involved the individual later identified as one Ninja Brian, and thus the file has been updated to reveal this identity after the fact.]

 

[2:42:10.72 pm - Identity requested.

2:42:10.73 pm - Individual {Ninja Brian} produces a knife of unknown origin. Composition: 30% steel, 70% unidentified metal. Source unknown.

2:42:10.75 pm - Individual {Ninja Brian} lodges knife in unit 80085-R-5QU15HY. Damage received to base cooling systems, temperature increase in housing of 69.4 degrees occurs. Supplementary cooling systems activated. Temperature will become detrimental to function in 10.94 degrees.

2:42:10.77 pm - Individual {Ninja Brian} produces additional knife. Evasive maneuvers initiated.

2:42:10.80 pm - Knife lodged into external scanner. Testing function…failure of all function for retinal recognition, failure of all function for blood type identification, failure of all photographic capabilities. Repair impossible, rerouting power distribution to avoid redundancy until maintenance can be completed.

2:42:10.81 pm - Unit 80085-R-5QU15HY deploying projectile sedatives.

2:42:10.82 pm - Target {Ninja Brian} hit.

2:42:10.83 pm - Individual {Ninja Brian} produces three additional knives. Unit 80085-R-5QU15HY is struck with all three. Catastrophic damage done to system. Signaling 192.168.1.1 to notify.

 

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**[80085-R-5QU15HY] 01000011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01101100 01111001 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101110 00001010**

 

 

2:42:10.84 pm - Unit 80085-R-5QU15HY recording anomaly. Individual {Ninja Brian} unaffected by initial sedative. Deploying additional dose per commands.

2:42:10.85 pm - Additional dose administered.

2:42:10.86 pm - Unit 80085-R-5QU15HY recording anomaly. Individual {Ninja Brian} unaffected by additional sedative. Deploying additional dose per commands.

2:42:10.87 pm - Additional dose administered. Maximum dosage exceeded.

2:42:10.88 pm - Individual {Ninja Brian} produces further weaponry. Unit 80085-R-5QU15HY is unable to identify objects. Scanners have failed. Additional damage to motherboard has been detected.

2:42:10.89 pm - Additional dose(s) ineffective. Individual {Ninja Brian} appears conscious and active. Requesting permission to administer additional dose from 192.168.1.1.

 

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**[80085-R-5QU15HY] 01000011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01101100 01111001 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101110**

 

2:42:10.90 pm - Clearance received. Unit 80085-R-5QU15HY administering additional 6.0 mL of sedative.

2:42:10.91 pm - Additional dose administered successfully.

2:42:10.95 pm - Individual {Ninja Brian} collapsed. Unit 80085-R-5QU15HY sensor malfunction. Unable to determine if heartbeat is present.

2:42:10.96 pm - Additional units have arrived. Unit 80085-R-5QU15HY no longer mobile. Powering down and awaiting maintenance.]

 

[Would you like to resume reading the rest of the report now?]

 

[Y/N?]

 

[Input received. Retrieving record…

…

…]

***

Kristen blinked, and in the span of time that it took for her eyes to close and open there was a clamor of noise that rattled her ears. She screamed as she ducked, clapping her hands to the side of her head as an explosion of light and sound erupted next to her. The air around them filled with sparks and heat, a cacophony of protesting metal and a distant scream that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, an unearthly wail that drifted on wind that didn’t exist. A heartbeat later everything went still and silent, and she lifted from her crouched position to find Brian laying on the ground next to Danny, several syringes lodged in his chest. The Immunobot, or the wreckage of it, lay strewn across the pavement, with nineteen knives and one ax cracking the casing to its chassis and shattering many of the components within.

“Oh no…” she took a step forward, holding her hand towards the men, though she knew there was nothing that she could do.

Danny smiled up at her, drowsy and blissful. “You’re so fucking hot. You’re like, as hot as like, a majestic, beautiful tree. With boobs. With really big boobs. I think. You should take off your sweater, so I can see them. I love you.”

“I -” once again she never got to give voice to her thoughts, as a flurry of Immunobots descended from the buildings above them. She stumbled out of the way as the robots swarmed the fallen men, arms emerging from their bodies to lift them off the ground. Danny kept his eyes on her as he was carried away, whisked around the corner and finally out of her sight. At the last moment, just before he disappeared, she couldn’t help but notice the look in his eyes. There was an infinite sadness there as the distance grew between them, a tragic loneliness that carried too much weight to be anything but real.

She could recognize it well, because it was something that had been dwelling inside her own heart each and every day that it had been beating.

It would have been easy to let that be the end of it. She could have returned to the library, collected her books, and gone about her life as though none of it had ever happened. She could have accepted the natural order of things, accepted that she would never see them again, accepted that the world was ordinary and anomalies didn’t last. It would have been so easy to walk away…for anyone but her.

Kristen Braven was a mathematician. More than that, Kristen was a very good, very brilliant mathematician. She did not often like to consider her knowledge to be a talent, as it felt arrogant to take pride in it. That did not change the fact that she had accomplished much while she had been in college, and had been sought after by the highest organizations as soon as she had graduated. Organizations as prestigious and vital as the Council of Dick Elders.

As it so happened, legions of robots required very complex programming. Complex programming required very complex math. Someone had to be there to create all those equations, to craft those algorithms.

It had been years since she had worked directly for the government, but Kristen still remembered everything about the math that she had put into the production of the latest robotic lines. She knew all the numbers by heart and how they had been implemented into the programming languages. Perhaps Danny had not been speaking nonsense when he had said it was his destiny to do what he came to their time to do. Perhaps he knew that he was meant to do it, and perhaps he wasn’t wrong. She was beginning to believe that such a thing as fate existed, after all, and that it had been churning away in the mysterious sky above them all this time, unnoticed until it was needed. She could believe in such a thing now, because as it just so happened, the two men being abducted by the Immunobots had met and intrigued the one woman capable of doing anything to free them. That felt like far more than coincidence.

Kristen turned, rushing back to her house as quickly as her tired legs could carry her, already working through the many calculations that would be required to save the reckless travelers. If their fate was to change this world, then it was her fate to help them. The lines of possibility had converged, it seemed. She had found the point of purpose, and she no longer doubted what needed to be done. For good or ill, she had made her final decision, and knew what this was that she wanted to do. More than anything before, more than anything that she had ever tried to do in all the days leading to this one. Her heart was beating, pounding, thrumming like the skin stretched across a drum, and she could _feel_ it. Every pump of blood filled her with new hope, new purpose, new resolve.

For the first time in her life, she finally felt alive.

 


	9. The Vision of Her Rebellion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kristen prepares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit short. It was originally the opening to the chapter, but the following scene was getting a bit long so I've separated them. I also thought people might like a bit of distraction today from the real world.
> 
> I hope this brightens someone's day, because words are just about all I'm good at, so it's all I can really offer.

She wrapped the electrical tape around the frayed edges of the wires, pinning them to the metal contacts. She would have preferred to weld them, but she didn’t have time. She glanced at the clock again, the remains of her microwave and television set surrounding her like a cloud of chaos, and she watched the second-hand tick ever onward, malicious in its consistency. She had always found time to be a fretful concept, particularly when she was forced to discuss it and its definitive implications with a theoretical physicist, the most insufferable of physicists. She had never considered time to be evil, however. Not until she had been faced with such a limited amount.

The consequences for missing her window of opportunity could be grave indeed, and so every minute, every second that slipped away was something she resented deeply.

A tremor rattled through her fingers and she shook the nerves out of her hand for the eighth or ninth time in the past hour. She kept trembling, quaking like a starved fawn, spindly legs unable to navigate the thin ice she now found herself stranded upon. She closed her eyes, thinking back again to the events that had seemed so trivial but were now marked in her mind like a luminous tattoo, forever a part of her and her skin and her bones and her memories and…

Brian had touched her.

She hadn’t noticed it in the moment. She was too preoccupied with the robots, with the rushing wind dancing around them in a gleeful circle, with the miraculous look deep in Danny’s eyes. Everything had happened so fast, so many small actions stacked into the same span of time that had amounted to a very crowded point in her existence. She had not thought about it until she had been jogging home, her sneakers slapping against the pavement as she ruminated on math equations and weak points in their corresponding code.

Her feet had slowed, her heart pounding so that she had felt it at the base of her throat where her sweater still lay, stretched and warped from its mishandling. Mishandling that had been doled out by a hand _other than her own._

He had been trying to save her, if she had read the situation correctly. He had grabbed her along with Danny, dragging them both away from the Guardianbots and laser-induced disintegration. He had touched her again when she had slowed, shocked to her core by Danny’s declaration of…of love. She had been so wrapped up in Danny, so absorbed in everything he was and all the mystery that entailed, that she had barely registered Brian’s presence. He had been the first person to touch her since the tag incident when she had been a little girl, and she hadn’t noticed.

The import of that was disturbing. She had been mulling it over as she constructed her defense against the Immunobots, amazed at her own lack of awareness. The first human contact that she had received in years, and it had slipped by her perception. It had felt normal, commonplace. _Natural._ As though his fingers around her bicep had been no more out of the ordinary than the weight of her sweater.

She shook her head, dispelling the thoughts and returning her focus to the controller in her hand. It had taken far too long to construct, but she was confident that every second had been necessary to craft a sufficient defense. It may not be perfect, but it would serve its purpose, and that was all that she could ask. She lifted the makeshift casing from its resting place, securing it to the circuitry that she had cannibalized from her belongings. It slotted into place as well as she could make it, and she attached it with another layer of tape, praying to the gods of adhesive that it would hold.

She stood, setting the device on her table and stepping around the scattered wires and shards of plastic. She made her way through the quiet, neat space in her apartment, heading to the back of her room where her closet had been built into the wall. Sliding the door open, she looked at her wardrobe, a collection of clothes that she had spared little to no attention to for her entire life. Rows of turtlenecks rested against hangers, their edges pressed to a crisp. She had organized them by color, so that they began with black and faded through the most vibrant one that she owned, a deep green that had reminded her of an emerald held aloft against the midnight sky. She pulled the ruined sweater over her head, folding it as she looked at the sweaters that remained to her.

She stopped, one sleeve hanging over her arm while her fingers gripped the other. She let it fall from her hands, crumpling on the floor in a chaotic riot of curves and wrinkles. She kicked it with her foot, sending it rolling a few inches away, increasing the entropy in its position. Stretched, discarded, and curled in on itself, it represented something to her that she could not identify. Something that she was shrugging off, something that she had shrugged off the moment she had stepped onto the street, staring at a frizzy man made of the sky. It was not something she had been conscious of, but had always felt aware of it. Something like a shackle wrapped around her throat, thick and tight, icy as it held her in place. It has always kept her from breathing, from drawing a full breath to feel what it was like to be filled with wind. Now she had broken the chain, snapped the first link. She was on a path that led into what could only be damnation, but the promise of the broad sky looming over the horizon was tantalizing enough to keep her going. Inch by inch, she would understand freedom and find a way to claim it for herself, reckless actions and all.

Her gaze returned to the sweaters available to her, and she lifted the night-kissed jade from its place in the lineup. She pulled it off the hanger, feeling the fabric against her palms. It was softer than most of her other sweaters. It was the rare article of clothing which was made of cotton, spun with more care and elasticity than the harsher wool counterparts. She never wore it. She had always felt as though it should be saved for special occasions, though she would not have been able to explain why if asked. She had purchased it on a whim, telling herself that owning something so colorful would make her happy. In a way, it had only enhanced her sadness as it sat in the closet day in and day out, awaiting its purpose yet never finding it. That elusive special occasion had never arisen.

Until today.

She gripped the collar of the sweater tightly and pulled, straining her muscles as they trembled until she heard the fabric rip. The sound was gargantuan in her muted apartment, too loud to exist, as though she were tearing through reality as much as the clothing. Methodically, stitch by stitch, she removed the neckline of the sweater, reveling in the sounds of destruction as they filtered to her ears. When that was done she donned the sweater, pulling her hair from beneath the ruined lining to spill down her back. It was more fitted than it should have been, perhaps shrunken from the heat of being washed too many times, trying to be prepared in case she had ever decided to use it. She turned to view herself in the hanging mirror on her closet door, taking in the vision of her rebellion. The collar now stretched well below her neckline, looping downward to reveal the base of her throat and three full inches of her upper chest. It was pale against the dark fabric, stark enough to draw her eye immediately. She placed her fingers in the space, feeling the heat of her rushing pulse through her skin. She was fairer than she had realized, though she had never thought to check or confirm her assumptions of her appearance. She had never paid so much heed to her own flesh.

Her pants seemed out of place now, hanging loosely around her hips like unwanted baggage. She shoved her arm into her closet, moving things out of the way until she located a box of older items. She was moving quicker now, wary of the time she was losing focused on such vain tasks, but the need for her outside to match how she was feeling inside drove her onward, insatiable. Prying open the lid of the container, she discovered the pants that she had worn when she had been a teenager, three sizes smaller than the ones she wore as an adult. If she were correct about the difference in inches, however…

She took off the khakis that she wore and stepped into the new ones, lifting them around her hips and fastening the clasp. Like the cotton sweater, they were far tighter than her previous attire, but that made them strangely comfortable. They molded to her form, leaving no room for the fabric to rustle or shift. She gazed into the mirror and saw herself, wearing cream and jade that _fit,_ a novel concept that she had never considered until that moment. Her clothes looked as though they had been made for her, rather than items she had found a way to use. It allowed her to see what she looked like in a way that she never had before, and she realized that she liked what she saw.

She nodded to her mirror image, appreciating the glint of resolve in her own eyes, and with that she hurried to complete her look. She tied her hair back with a remnant of thread, securing it so that she was confident that it would not come loose. Then she used the shredded ruins of the sweater’s collar to wrap around her face, copying the pattern and style that Brian had worn. When she was done, nothing was visible through the folds but her eyes and the long, golden fall of her hair spilling in waves behind her. 

Now, truly, she was dressed for a special occasion.

Kristen raced back through the apartment, grabbing her remote and slipping out the front door, silent now that she was unhindered by extra layers of fabric. As she went, slinking through the streets and avoiding the gaze of anyone who might get curious, she sent out silent prayers to whatever part of the universe listened to such things.

_Please, let me be on time._


	10. Indestructible Boner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Immunobots attempt inoculation.

The first thing that he saw when he opened his eyes was not boobs.

He had been sure that it would be. He wasn’t positive what had given him that surety, but his instincts had told him that just beyond his laced eyelashes would be the most perfect set of breasts that had ever swayed from a ribcage. Soft, plush, nipples standing defiant against the gentle caress of gravity which would lay them, with care and attention, upon the chest of a woman with waves of gold flowing from her head. He felt as though he could almost touch them, and that if he opened his eyes fast enough, it would be the only scene that would greet him.

Instead, when his eyes flew open, he was assaulted by the dim gray of a boring, featureless wall. He blinked, clearing away a fog that hovered at the edges of his vision, making him feel like he had been swimming in cotton candy made out of methamphetamine. He could actually feel his pupils dilating and retracting as he struggled to clear his sight, the lights blurring and stretching in weird, wobbly fingers that marred the windows of his gaze. His chest felt sore and empty, his limbs numb and floppy, his spandex riding up in awkward places which no spandex should venture. He went to move, to adjust it, but found his arms trapped behind his back, the rattle of metal tipping him off to the manacles clapped to his wrists.

He turned around, arching his back so that he could get a good look. He was thin and wiry enough that he could become the fleshy approximation of a pretzel if he put his mind to it, and so he twisted to see that he was, indeed, bound at the wrists, the bindings attached to the wall. He was also sitting in the world’s least comfortable chair, molded out of metal with sharp edges that were digging into the back of his knees. Ninja Brian was beside him in a similar seat, head dipped forward with his chin resting on his chest. Danny frowned, trying to remember the last time he had ever seen the ninja sleep, but nothing came to mind.

It was boring watching his friend sleep, and looking at him while he did it made him feel like he could hear distant screaming in the back of his mind that had always been there but was masked by the faithful protection of his own heartbeat. He shook his head, turning his attention to the room around them, which proved equally boring, but with less unsettling psychological after-effects. It was square, grey, and empty save for the chairs they sat in. There was something that could have been a window on the wall across from them, and if he squinted he could make out a seam that could have served as a door. All of it grey. So much grey. He was seriously sick of that color.

He furrowed his brow, trying to recall how they had come to be in such a boring, empty room. He remembered…a tree? A tree with golden leaves and boobs. No, that didn’t seem right. A woman, with tree hair and boobs. No, that wasn’t right either. Eyes as green as the winding woods, hair as gold as sunlight across the gleaming snow of the wild mountain peaks. She had such sad, sad eyes. They had looked like they were brimming with tears that she was tenuously keeping within, like they had been like that for as long as anyone could remember. Had she brought them to this room?

No. He remembered her receding, disappearing as they were carried away. His face had felt like it had been stretched into taffy and spritzed with unicorn spunk, but he remembered cold hands wrapped around his limbs. The same kind of cold as the metal biting into the edges of his wrists as he fidgeted against the manacles. He remembered the robots vaguely, and was irritated that they had betrayed him so.

What else could go wrong in this future? The Council of Dick Elders, housed in the Boob Dome, had banned sex. No orgies, foursomes, threesomes, or even regular old twosomes could be had. Everyone wore the clothing equivalent of wool sacks in colors drab enough that they couldn’t even excite a blind man. Now they met cool robots who had done something to them and dragged them away from the first chick that looked bang-able.

He was beginning to hate the year 6969.

His morose musings were interrupted when the seam on the wall emitted a small rush of air, then popped open to swing wide. Three of the ovoid robots entered in through the doorway, hovering quietly as they filled the tiny space. They surrounded the pair of them, flitting from side to side as they flashed various lights over the manacled men.

“Hey, what -”

“Subject B vitals stable. Consciousness imminent in approximately two-point-three seconds.” The robot chimed, interrupting Danny and his very important question that would have been smart and investigative, and had not at all just been ‘what the fuck?’.

A green light flickered on the second robot. “Subject A awake and alert. Vitals good. Negative for presence of inoculation.”

As soon as the robot finished its report, Brian jerked his head up, his eyes open and clear. He looked around the room, then down at his chair. He turned, facing Danny, an unasked question hovering in his gaze. Danny shrugged, unable to articulate what the fuck, since he had not asked it and therefore had not received an answer.

“Hormone levels and body hair growth indicates fully grown male subjects. Initiating adult inoculation procedure. Playing file 76546738564G: _Sarah Finds a Strap-on_.”

Danny’s head snapped up at that, looking at the robot in consternation. “Hang on, what now?”

In reply, the window on the far wall lit up, revealing itself to be a large screen. A loading bar appeared in the center and hovered there for a moment while it filled, and after that it displayed an image of a bedroom. Two girls, a brunette and a redhead, entered the room. They were scantily clad, which didn’t last long as one of them announced that she was hungry and stripped the other girl of her garments in order to munch away at a meticulously groomed carpet.

Danny had developed a boner the second the loading bar had popped up on the screen, but everything that had come after certainly wasn’t helping matters. Brian looked over at him, his obvious flag flying high over his spandex-clad penis pals. His friend shook his head, rolling his eyes.

“What? Don’t look at me like this is a no-reason boner.” He wrinkled his nose, irritated at both Brian and the growing tension in his handy-dandies. Brian raised an eyebrow, skeptical of his declaration, which only incensed him further. “Look, this is a perfectly reasonable boner. The most logical boner in this room. He’s got his degree in theoretical reasonableness.”

“Subject status: aroused. Erection achieved. Administering inoculation.” The first robot, whom Danny was now thinking of as Frodo for no particular reason, floated over to him. A hatch on the side opened, and an arm wielding a syringe slid out of it, making contact with his bicep and injecting a brownish liquid into his veins.

“Ow!” he tried to jerk away but didn’t get very far, and the damage had already been done in any case. Faint burning and tingling rushed along his limb, spreading through his body as whatever they had given him reached his heart and was pumped outward.

Frodo shot a beam of light from the sensor around its neck, scanning Danny up and down and casting crazy shadows across his thunderous erection and meaty side dishes. An angry beep emitted from somewhere inside its chassis. “Subject status: aroused. Inoculation attempt failed.”

A second robot was hovering between the two, and Danny decided that he would call this one Winnifred the Woeful. “Subject B status: unconfirmed. Arousal status unknown. Negative for inoculation.”

The third robot, thus dubbed Schmendrick, drifted towards Brian, a hatch opening to reveal an arm with some kind of scanner that loomed towards Brian. Brian glanced at the robot and it slowed and came to a halt. A series of weird, asynchronous beeps emitted from its speakers before it turned and rapidly left the room, an angry orange light blinking on its back.

The women on the screen had found a large dildo the color of eggplant flavored champagne, and the redhead had affixed it to her pelvis. A bead of sweat trickled down the back of Danny’s neck.

Frodo hovered closer to him again. “Administering backup inoculation.” Frodo produced a syringe that was twice the size as the first one, this time jamming it into Danny’s throat. He coughed as the fluid was flooded into his flesh, feeling the area start to bruise even before the fiery hell of the medication eradicated his senses. He squealed in pain, the sound echoing through the room akin to that of a gerbil being trampled by a marching band of sentient kazoos. He heard Brian snicker at the sound, and he cast a glare at him before returning his attention to Frodo.

“Look, if this isn’t leading to a sweet robot handy, I’m gonna have to insist we stop.”

Winnifred the Woeful and Frodo ignored him as another robot, Schmendrick 2.0, entered the room and zipped over to Brian.

“Subject remains fully erect. Readings indicate erection may have increased in size and firmness. Inoculation attempts ineffective.” Winnifred the Woeful announced. Schmendrick 2.0 launched a syringe into Brian’s bicep, but the needle snapped in half at the point of impact, and the robot let out a series of beeps that were decidedly disappointed.

Frodo flickered an orange light on its chest. “Initial scans indicate immunity on Subject A.”

“Error. Immunity not possible.” Winnifred the Woeful had a light on its neck that turned a furious red. Schmendrick 2.0 tried to give Brian another shot, but the needle disintegrated into dust the moment it touched his chest, and the robot beeped in confusion.

“Analysis indicates pheromones with irregular potency in Subject A. Effect unknown. Processing…” Frodo hovered silently for several seconds before continuing, “Possible ramifications include lowering effectiveness of previously applied inoculations.”

Winnifred the Woeful beeped woefully. “Error. Analysis results impossible based on current biological data for human biology.”

Danny looked at Brian. “Hey, did that robot just say I wasn’t human?” Brian shrugged as Schmendrick 2.0 gave him a third shot in the thigh, the needle shattering into a burst of glitter that drifted harmlessly to the floor.

“Scans confirm human biology. Obtaining sample.” Frodo produced an empty syringe, jamming it into Danny’s arm and sucking out a vial full of blood. It retracted the prize, the light of its sensors flickering as it examined his DNA. “Analysis complete. Human status confirmed. Inoculation immunity possible but not confirmed. Suggested procedure: administer inoculation at source.”

“Confirmed. Proceed.” Winnifred the Woeful chimed.

“Source?” Danny’s voice cracked as he looked between the two robots, fear turning his intestines into icy snakes that coiled in his stomach. Frodo produced a syringe the size of the dildo being enthusiastically manipulated by the girls on screen. “No. Nope.” Danny shook his head vehemently, his hair spinning in a cloud of curly frizz around his cheeks. “No. We’re not doing this.” Frodo hovered closer, and Danny looked at Brian as he tried to shrink back in his chair. “Brian. Brian, stop them. Brian, don’t let them put that needle in my _oh my fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUCCCCK Iamsonotputtingthispartinthesong!_ _”_ Frodo inserted the needle into the base of his shaft, just above his bulbous thwappin’ sacks. The plunger on the syringe compressed and Danny’s eyes crossed as the burning fluid was pumped into his most precious of bits. The world around him spun and jerked as the horrible fire spread from his loins to his chest, then out through every inch of him. Sweat formed along the curve of his brow, trailing down his temples. For a moment he couldn’t breathe, the air in his throat hitched as a horrible, high-pitched croaking sound rattled through his lungs.

When the worst of it had passed he forced himself to breathe once more, gasping as he looked down to his assaulted column of thrustitude. The gasp turned into a sigh of relief as he saw his boner still intact, not deflated like a shitty balloon as he had feared. He closed his eyes, tipping his head back against the chair and reveling in the fact that his steadfast chubby could withstand anything. He had an indestructible boner that no force could quell. Excalibur, the invincible erection.

Still, he would have preferred not to have that fact tested by a robot with a fucking syringe.

He lifted his head, looking at Brian and shrugging since he couldn’t spread his arms in disbelief. “What the fuck, dude?”

Brian shook his hands, still bound behind the chair, giving Danny a long-suffering look.

“Come on, don’t play dumb. We both know better.”

Brian rolled his eyes and sighed, but then nodded in acquiescence. He flexed his shoulders, putting pressure on his lower arms, and the manacles around his wrists snapped into pieces, chunks of metal skittering across the floor. He stood, produced an ax from somewhere that Danny hadn’t quite seen, and then lopped off the head of Schmendrick 2.0, which had been looking at one of the shattered needles with consternation. The robot beeped once, forlorn and exasperated, before falling to the floor in a heap of dead metal.

Brian spun, using the ax to break the manacles holding Danny. He launched himself from his chair, grateful to have the sharp metal away from the backs of his knees. He shook out his hands while he kicked outward, his foot impacting Winnifred the Woeful and sending it sailing into the screen, both things exploding into a shower of sparks. He spun around and chopped Frodo in half with his special ninja chop, taking a great deal of satisfaction in seeing the robot burst into bits of useless plastic that would never again stab someone in the crotch with a comically large needle.

The pair looked up, intending to survey their victory while taking up victorious poses, but the celebration was waylaid as a horde of robots started swarming into the room, all of them flashing red lights of alert. Twenty or so made it into the small room, backing them against the wall. There were even more outside in the hall, crowding them in uncountable numbers.

Danny looked at Brian, their eyes meeting across the chaos. “Today, we die like heroes.” He punched the head off the robot closest to him, his knuckles shredding the plastic with ease. “Ninja Brian, before I go, I just want you to know…I was always the hot one.”

Brian didn’t answer as he turned, swinging his ax in an arc that took out thirteen robots at once. Danny lost sight of him as more robots crammed into the space around him, the heat from their engines clogging the air. He lifted his leg, kneeing one of them to give himself room to breathe, and he felt it shoot across the room and into another group of robots, all of them falling into a heap. He lashed out to the left with his elbow, meeting more hard metal, chilling his bones as it dented under his onslaught. More still were to his right, and he used his shoulder to throw them out of the way. For every robot he smashed, three more seemed to take its place, and he couldn’t hit them fast enough. He was drowning in waves of flashing lights and furious beeps, the air cracking with electricity and the output from dozens of cooling fans.

They weren’t going to make it.

He put forth a valiant effort, feeling bruises start to bloom across his body where the robots got in their hits. He danced out of the way of syringes, throwing his fists at anything within reach. The noise in the room grew overwhelming, the combined chaos of the horde or robots and the ninja combatants swallowing all other sound. He couldn’t even hear himself think any longer, so he stopped trying, letting instinct take over. His limbs ached, his muscles begging for rest though he knew none could be given. His pulse pounded, his ears ringing with the constant hum of his own rushing blood underneath the din. He was flagging and he knew it. He wasn’t sure how many he had taken out, or how many more that there were, but he knew he was reaching his limits.

If only he were as indestructible as his boner.

He knew that it was the end, and so he decided that if he was going to go down then he would take as many of the robo-fuckers with him as he could. He ran forward, holding his arms out and throwing his whole body into a last ditch, all out, no holds barred attack. He closed his eyes as he waited for an impact that would undoubtedly hurt, his flesh being ripped apart as the glorified garbage disposals tore him to shreds. He was surprised when that impact was delayed by 1.69 seconds, his momentum carrying him through air that should not have been empty. After that, he smashed into the ground, bouncing over robot parts until he skidded into the wall. He opened his eyes, surprised to see that their assailants no longer hovered in the air, each one now lying prone on the floor, lights off and beeps silent.

“Uh…cool?”

***

The dark voice whispered soothing things in his ears, lips dipped in tar moving to the rhythm of the blood in his veins. Murder.

He was eliminating the murder targets. Part by part he dismantled them, destroying their artificial lives. One cried as it went down, circuitry firing a plethora of ions into the liminal space in which they existed, its meager consciousness returning to the ether from whence it came. _Murder._

The dark voice sang with him. Murder. Stabbing and shredding and ripping and also murder. Murder target twenty-seven eliminated. Murder target twenty-eight eliminated. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. _Murder_. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. _Murder_. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Stabbing. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. _Murder_. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. _Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder. Murder._

Murder target ninety-three was not murdered. Remaining murder targets fell to the floor, dead but decidedly un-murdered. Brian tilted his head, looking at them, trying to decipher the meaning of a death that he had not inflicted. It happened, sometimes, but rarely. There were a great many murder targets in the room now that he had not murdered, however. More than he found acceptable. The dark voice whispered its displeasure, and he turned in his mind to glare at it. It recoiled, backing down in the face of his authority.

Movement at the door drew his attention and he turned, narrowing his eyes. He lifted the knife in his hands, summoned because he had willed it, aiming it at the neck of the lithe figure that had entered.

No.

He stopped, lowering the blade, the metal evaporating into whatever dimension that would keep it until he next had need of it. Don’t murder the blonde one. Don’t murder the blonde one and don’t murder the fluffy one, those were his rules.

For now.

Brian watched the un-murdered girl walk over to the un-murdered fluffy man.

While he watched, he thought about murder. That was nice.


	11. What Have We Been Missing?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Kristen reunites with the good ninja boys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The world sucks right now so I'm writing dick jokes to compensate, but boy I hope it helps the eight of you reading and not just my dumb ass.
> 
> Y'all come find me on tumblr if you ever need anything. I don't have much but I have a lot of words and sometimes those are useful.

Her fingers were shaking violently around the remote clutched between them, so much so that she couldn’t even feel the button depressing anymore as she rammed her thumb into it for what felt like the hundredth time. It was, in fact, the ninth, which she knew because she had been counting and running the mathematical probability for success in her head each time she had to press it again. She knew that each iteration increased her chances of failure, but stopping would have produced worse odds. She had to get through, and so onward she went, praying that the universe would see things resolving in her favor.

The compound was not guarded in the true sense of the word, as no one in their right mind would think to break into the center where they took those that would have committed crime. The Immunobot headquarters was where all aberrations were kept and provided medical treatment. The kind of medical treatment had always been ill-defined in the documentation given to her while she had participated in the coding project. It was understood amongst the programmers that inclinations towards crime were corrected with the use of medication, as well as meticulous inoculation against the plague that had nearly wiped out humanity thousands of years ago. Herd immunity had been what the Council of Dick Elders had campaigned on, successfully seizing worldwide power as the only people capable of driving back the sickness, and it was the promise of a plague-free existence that they sought to maintain in all laws that they created. All for the good of the community, or so they professed.

She stared at the wreckage of robots that spilled across the hall, her remote having performed admirably given that it was only the shreds of a microwave and television cobbled together with tape of dubious quality. It sent out a signal that inserted a small fallacy in the Immunobots main operation matrix, creating a feedback loop that rapidly overwhelmed their logic processors. Their central processing units would be fried, resulting in an immediate and unavoidable shutdown. On her way through the rest of the compound, she had only been forced to disable a few robots at a time, at most twelve. When she had turned the corner into this corridor, however, she had been faced with a horde of them, all trying to crowd into one room at the end of the hall. It was a miracle her signal had been able to hit them all.

She knew, however, without a doubt, that this was the room she had been looking for.

She had pressed the button and all the robots had collapsed, a graveyard of electronic bones and failing code strewn at her feet.

She shook her head, pushing the shock and horror into the back of her mind as she rushed to step over the wreckage. She picked her way through the debris, hopping over a large pile in the doorway so that she could clamber into the room. There were more robots within, some of them destroyed beyond the docile abilities of her code. Brian stood at one end, seemingly unharmed, while Danny lay prone on the floor by the wall.

Her heart dropped, sinking into a mire of fear and despair that she had not thought she was capable of. She had never before experienced such a rush of terror over anything in her life. Living in comfort had stifled her, had been killing her in such minuscule increments that she had not even noticed her slow death until she had been shocked out of it, but it had at least spared her from feeling _this._ This horrible certainty that everything was wrong and could never be right again, that it was all her fault. After all that, had she been too late? Had she failed him?

She raced over, falling to her knees next to him and pulling the cloth from around her face so that she could breathe. The air felt too thick, her throat too thin. Her heart was a stone in the pit of her stomach, dragging her downward until she was certain all that there could ever be was darkness, even as she grasped the vain hope that maybe, just maybe, things weren’t as they seemed. She was trembling as she reached for him, fingers fluttering like moths seeking and shying from the flame before them.

Then he turned his head, his eyes open and clear, and she jumped back with a small scream that she hadn’t intended to emit.

His eyes lit up with a joyous glow. “You’re not a tree after all!”

He scrambled to his feet and she matched the motion, standing at her full height yet still needing to look up to meet his gaze. She didn’t say anything, for she had no words left to describe what she was feeling. Relief, sweet and sharp, cut through her like a blade. Seeing him living and breathing before her seemed like too great a boon to ask for, and yet it was so. The mire that would have destroyed her receded, replaced with a light that she didn’t know how to cope with or contain. His smile drove her to madness, the halo of his hair like a haze that fogged her way. She could not express how much she had feared for him, nor could she explain why she had felt such a way, so she stood in silence, gazing at him and hoping that he would understand the messages which she could not convey.

“Wait, you’re definitely the same girl from before, right? Hey Brian, this is the one, uh, what was it…?” he frowned, scratching the stubble scattered along his jawline. “Kayla!!!”

“Kristen.” She flinched as he shouted her name, cringing from the sound even as she corrected him. “Shh, there are other Immunobots still in the compound, they’ll hear you.”

“Listen, Kacy -”

“Kristen.”

“- I need you to know that my love for you is eternal, and that no stupid robots will ever come between us.” His voice still echoed in the hollow halls of the compound, and she glanced nervously towards the door.

“Um, I think…you should…”

“My heart beats only for you!” he surged closer, grabbing her hands and pulling them forward to clasp between his own. The sound of his declaration was like the clarion ring of a bell, filling the air around them and filtering out into the corridors. In her surprise, both at the sound and his abrupt contact, the controller slipped from her nerveless grasp, falling to the floor where it hit, bounced, then shattered into a plethora of oddly shaped pieces on the second impact. They looked down as one at the ruined instrument, staring at it as the whirring of additional robots built up in one of the distant rooms of the compound, their alarm beeps a threat that would soon materialize before them.

Danny cleared his throat, still holding her hands while he looked at the remote. “Oh. That’s…that’s probably bad, right?”

He looked at her, then they both turned to look at Brian. The Immunobots could be heard growing closer, and so she did the only thing that seemed sensible in the moment.

“Run!” she cried, turning and bolting towards the door. The sound of their footfalls followed her, so she knew that they had taken heed of her advice, for which she would be eternally grateful.

They skidded through the robot parts into the hallway, and as she turned to head out the way she had come she found herself faced with a wall of Immunobots looming towards their room. She whirled in the other direction, her heart pounding as panic flooded through her veins. They reached the end of the hall, where it branched off into two directions. She started to follow the left branch, her mind frantically drawing a map of the compound to try and predict which way would lead her back on the path to the exit. She was reasonably certain that if they went left and looped around, they would find themselves on the other side of the robots chasing them and she could navigate them out.

This was waylaid when Danny grabbed her hand, lacing their fingers together and pulling her in the opposite direction, down the right side of the branch.

“Wait…where are we going? This isn’t the right way!” she tried to plant her feet, to slow their speed, but then he turned and smiled at her and she lost the strength in her limbs.

“Relax. It’s all part of the adventure!” he laughed, glowing with adrenaline as he dragged her along. He was grinning in the face of danger, lit up with the same glittering magnificence of a shooting star as it plummeted through the atmosphere. He cared not for the chaos around him, for the threat to his existence. Instead he reveled in the beauty, in the glorious, prismatic colors of his own life being burned into splendor. He was far braver than someone like Kristen could ever hope to be, but she took comfort in that. It brought her peace and courage that quelled the quaking in her nervous veins.

She was a part of his story now, for good or ill. She would follow him to the end of it, doing her best to see that he got through. Even if it took all she had, even if she had to burn down every part of herself as she fell along beside him, she would happily do so. Anything if only to keep seeing that smile.

***

They ducked into an empty room, the lights off so that they were shrouded in darkness when they tilted the door mostly closed. Brian kept it open a fraction of an inch, peering out into the hall to monitor their pursuers while the rest of them caught their breath. Danny still felt sore from all the places that he had been punched by robots, so he was more exhausted than he should have been.

He let go of the girl’s hand for the first time since several hallways ago, wiping it across his brow to get rid of the sweat. He stood up and tried to look at her, but the shadows in the room kept him from getting a good view. Even in this dim light, though, he could still see it reflected off her hair as it swished back and forth every time she moved.

He stepped closer to her, looking down until he caught the glint in her eyes. “Kandice!” She mumbled something that he couldn’t quite hear, which he presumed was a shy declaration of affection for him. “You came back for us! Hey, why did I think you were a tree?”

She surprised him by clapping a hand over his mouth, and he blinked at her as she leaned in close to him. “Shh, not so loud or they’ll hear you.” For a moment she held him like that, and he could feel her pulse through the palm of her hand. “Do you promise to be quiet?” he nodded, as enthusiastically as he could without tipping both of them over. This seemed to satisfy her, and she lowered her hand.

“You came back for us.” He whispered, the syllables whistling out of his chest as they were more air than sound.

He felt her shrug more than he saw it, her foot scuffing against the ground as she fidgeted. “Yes, well…it seemed like the thing to do.”

Danny turned to Brian, still hovering over the door. “Hey, psst, Brian. Brian, she wants my dick.” Brian didn’t turn, but he did fling his arm out to give them a thumb pointed skyward. The girl shifted, moving so that she was standing in the beam of light coming from the opening in the door. Her cheeks were bright red, lighting up her face in an adorable hue. He followed her, maintaining their closeness. “You know, the way the light is hitting your eyes really brings out the color of your boobs.”

She opened her mouth then closed it again without saying anything, making a face as though she had just swallowed an entire, uncut pineapple, but also like she kind of enjoyed swallowing that entire, uncut pineapple.

She tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear. “I’m just happy I got here before anything happened.”

The charming smile that he had been wielding fell from his face, bitterness filling him at the memories of what _had_ happened in that room. “Those robots put a shot in my shaft.”

“What?” she blinked, genuinely surprised. “You must have been groggy from the sedative.”

“The fuck I was.” He hissed the words out, close enough to a yell that she lifted her hand in warning, so he lowered his voice again before he continued. “Look, I don’t remember ninety percent of the things that happen around me, but I remember everything that happens to my dick.” Brian turned to nod solemnly to back him up, and the girl looked between the two of them.

“Why would they distribute the inoculation there?” She didn’t seem to be asking anyone in particular as she cocked her him to the side, placing her hand on her chin and tapping a finger against her lips. “Wouldn’t it have been more effective in…a vein? The plague is supposed to target the blood stream, after all.”

“Plague?” he shook his head. “Nah, they were trying to kill my philosophically-sound boner.”

“I…okay, only some of that made sense.”

He tilted his head to the side, trying to figure out what portion of his explanation could possibly have been unclear. “Which part?”

“They were trying to kill…your erection?”

“Yes. I guess.” He shrugged. He supposed they could have been trying to do something else, but considering they kept talking about his erection and studying his erection and basing their tests on his erection, he was pretty confident that his dick had been the center of attention. Normally it would have been a good thing, but he had made the swift and firm decision that needles were not one of his kinks and had no place anywhere near his slamming rod and bulging buckaroos.

She wrinkled her nose. “Well, that could explain why the injection went there…wait, why did you even _have_ an erection?”

Her tone sounded remarkably like the way Brian’s eyes had looked when he had silently asked the same, and Danny felt very judged. “ _From the porn!_ _”_

Both the girl and Brian turned to shush him, and he crossed his arms over his chest as quietly as he could.

“Um, you had…pornography?” she sounded skeptical, which irritated him further.

“ _No,_ the robots had porn.”

“Why would they show you porn? Er, pornography?” she paused, and he watched her face carefully in the shaft of light. She blinked, and in that small amount of time she changed from confused to horrified. Her evergreen eyes flew wide, her mouth dropping open. The color drained from her cheeks as she looked down at her hand, the one she had held against his lips. “Oh my god. They keep the genders separated until inoculations are complete. Children aren’t even allowed to touch. No physical contact of any kind…there was never a plague. It’s sexual suppression.”

He nodded. “Right. Boner-murder.”

She didn’t seem to hear him, shaking her head as she stumbled backwards into the wall. “We didn’t…we weren’t enlightened. Humanity didn’t rise above baser instincts…they’ve just drugged us. They’ve been medicating it out of us this whole time.”

“That’s fucked up.”

She lifted the hand higher, her stare too bright and too wide. “What…what have we been missing?”

The sadness in her eyes was crystal clear, filling to the edges like shards of glass threatening to flow over. For a moment, he thought about what this must mean to her. A hot girl, living her whole life unable to touch anyone, told by the people in charge that it was all for the best. She had been alone, and now she was finding out that it wasn’t even her choice. He could see it breaking her, parts of her heart cracking to fall into an abyss building up inside her mind. The abyss where all that sadness came from, filling her up until it reflected out of her gaze.

“Hey.” He stepped forward, taking her chin in his hands and tilting her face up so that she would look at him, trying to force her out of the horror in her head and back in the moment. “I won’t let them get away with it.”

Her mouth fell open the barest breadth of an inch, hanging just above where his thumb rested against her skin. Her lips were the color of a dusty rose, curved in such a way that he thought of petals on a still pond. The forlorn glitter in her eyes became something different, something brighter, something stronger. She looked at him with wonder, his words imparting something to her that seemed to draw her awake. She looked alive, flesh and blood moving under the command of a soul that had been bound by lies for too long.

He meant what he said to her. Every word of it. He would fight for a future where she wouldn’t feel so alone, a future where she would have people to turn to, people that could help dissolve that despair from her eyes. He wouldn’t leave her to this future where all she had was the loneliness of wool sweaters and productivity. He would show her what it was to be human, to exist in the world as a creature capable of remarkable things with the brush of a finger, with the press of a tongue, with the caress of lips and a tender sigh. He would teach her everything that he had ever known about the power of two people coming together, and then he would destroy those Dick Elders for hiding it from her in the first place.

Danny was leaning forward, inching their faces closer, when Brian cleared his throat. They turned to see him waving at the now fully open door, signaling that the coast was clear. He let go of the girl’s chin, taking her hand once more as he walked with resolve towards the door. He let Brian guide them out of the compound and out into the late afternoon, the sky just starting to sink into the deep colors of dusk. The breeze still skirted the horizon, and it danced around them as they headed back to the ship.

He didn’t know what he would do yet, but he knew that it had to be big. For the little boy, for the girl with the sad eyes, and for the sake of every person that had ever existed that dreamed of a billion-person orgy in a sea of sex-scented whipped cream.

Ninja Sex Party would save them all.

 


	12. Not as Described

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they arrive at the spaceship/time machine.

It was difficult to bear the weight of her reality crashing down around her. Kristen had been lied to. By everyone, by everything. She had been conceived in a laboratory, birthed through canals of cold plastic and unfeeling steel. She had been raised at the hands of machinery driven by algorithms and directives. She had been punished mercilessly for holding the hand of another little girl. She had been kept a million miles from everyone that she had ever known, the space between them far, far greater than the physical world could encompass. Oceans of isolation, each soul drifting through the world with their only companions as nothing more than nigh invisible glints on the horizon. It was how they were saved, or so she had believed. Others were out there, living, continuing on with humanity. It was better to drown in her sea of despair than to risk that collective existence. Being together, being something other than alone, that risked lives. It risked bringing back the plague that had nearly destroyed them thousands of years ago, the great specter that forever loomed above their heads. They no longer needed touch, they no longer needed love. They had life, and that was enough. That was peaceful, that was prosperous. They were told that was enough. She had always been told that she should feel like it was enough.

It never had been, but when you are adrift in an ocean without anyone to see you, it is far easier to tell pretty stories that your starving mind will believe.

There was only one code for inoculation. She had been there when they added each line item to the algorithms, each piece of information that the robots would need. There was one, and only one, inoculation that the Immunobots were authorized to distribute. If it was not to stop the plague, then nothing was. There was no threat, no villainous microbe serving as the ax chained to the existential guillotine. The people of the world were the carefully controlled herd, led to believe that they were being saved by the barred cages they were kept in. They were so cowed that they could no longer tell the difference between the green fields they dreamed of or the cold, steel rails which they were given. Blind. They had all been blind.

They spoke little on the way to the ship, which under any other circumstance would have suited the brooding mathematician as she tried to hold together the pieces of her sanity. Kristen had not known them long, but she still felt as though Danny’s long stretches of silence were uncharacteristic. He spoke only a handful of times, to tell her about the ship that they were walking to, to speak of small exploits from his past which invariably involved actions that sounded hyperbolic at best and fallacy at worst, or to ask her if she was okay. He did the last of those three times, to which she responded less confidently each iteration. It was not her fear over what would become of her that nagged at her, for she no longer cared. It was not hesitation against the path which she was walking, as she felt there was no longer any other option. What drained her resolve and filled her with unease was the look in his eyes as they walked.

They were no longer unburdened. Ever since he had promised her that the Dick Elders would not get away with their crimes it had been there, the barest flicker of shadow. It had taken her hours to place her finger on it, to realize what it was that she saw there. Where there had once only been light there was now darkness, albeit only a sliver. A single cloud come to brush across her sky, meager yet able to block out some of the bright, bright light. She saw it there, hovering below the dazzling shimmer of his smiles, and she hated it. More than anything in the universe, more than anything she had ever known, more than the betrayal of discovering that she had lived in solitude for the sake of liars maintaining their grim hold on power. What she hated most was the idea that their world, their broken point in time, had somehow instilled in Danny an ounce of sorrow.

She watched him hide it with every step. His gait resolute, his head held high. Were he to be seen on the street, those that looked would not have noticed. Were he to speak to Brian, that lingering shade would not be found on the tip of his tongue. At times, she felt as though she had imagined it, some figment that her mind had created to distract her from the darkness burrowing through her own chest. But no, that would have been kinder. That would have made her glad, to shuffle off the worry and guilt that it brought about because she could tell herself it wasn’t real. Caused by her or her world or her self-defeating despair over both. She wouldn’t have to feel bad if his sorrow didn’t exist.

It did, though. Tenuous, microscopic, blink and it was missed as it fluttered in and out of visibility like a sickened butterfly trapped in overgrown brush. It was a single note hanging in the air, the same timbre as the look she had seen in him as the robots had dragged him away, a rest in the song where his breath shivered with unease. There was something tragic about it, but also something beautiful. Like a bruise, brushes of purple and blue blooming across untainted skin, painting him with color that in spite of its pain still took her breath away. Even his loneliness was beautiful, stark as he pushed it aside to cling to hope and bravery. Couching it so deeply in optimism that it could be ignored.

She hated that it was there and would have done anything within her power to remove it. She had a feeling that, no matter the scope, no matter her ability, this task was beyond her power, though she wished it otherwise.

Still, she could try.

The silence hovering between them was finally broken as Danny let out a burst of laughter, jogging ahead as they turned the corner. Brian picked up his pace to match, and so Kristen followed suit, walking around the edge of the trimmed hedges to see a structure positioned between them. Danny had told her of their ship, and he had described it as a large craft with gleaming wings, a hull curved and lined with luminous lights, windows big enough that through them all the universe could be viewed. He had mentioned elaborate controls that allowed them to bend the rules of time and space, of powerful capabilities that could entertain them on their journeys. He spoke of a hot tub that had been removed for safety reasons, though she couldn’t imagine why such a thing would have been added in the first place. The ship had sounded like a magnificent relic, worthy of carrying the men to any time which they desired.

It would have been an understatement to merely state that the ship was…not as described.

It looked like a toy. Worse, it looked like a toy that had been poorly maintained. The paint - which may have once been metallic enough to shine - was chipped and dinted. The “wings” were neither large nor gleaming, sticking out on either side like the awkward fins of a lopsided penguin. The luminous lights were no more than a row of bulbs around the base of the door, covered in soot and dust so that their ability to illuminate could not have been stronger than that of a sputtering candle. There was a single, round window on the side of the craft, twice the size of a porthole one might have found on an ancient fishing craft, which could perhaps offer a view if the viewer pressed their nose directly against the glass. Judging by the smudges, that is precisely what had been done. There was thick, silver residue left behind from what could have only been duct tape along the edge of the door, and she could not bring herself to ask what they could have possibly _taped_ to a vehicle meant for interstellar travel. She had a horrible inkling that it was related to the aforementioned hot tub, and she didn’t think her brain could handle the gymnastics that would be required to face an explanation that included a “hot tub” somehow constructed out of tape.

“Our faithful, time-traveling steed.” Danny was standing in front of it, hands on his hips and a grin on his face that looked like it belonged in a toothpaste commercial.

“This…is your ship?”

Brian strolled forward, pressing a button next to the door that caused it to slide open. The movement was smoother than she had expected, though she was caught off guard by the puff of glitter that filtered out as Brian sloughed inside. Within there was a circular chamber that housed a control panel and a stack of shelves which were sparse. A food dispenser was embedded in the wall, along with a door labeled “towels”, though she could see no evidence of a shower or sink.

Danny wrapped an arm around her shoulders, guiding her through the doorway and into the cramped space. “I know, it’s probably more magnificent than you can comprehend, but it’s okay. I’m here if you need to hold on to something as you process its splendor. Especially if you would like to hold on in the region below my stomach and above my thighs.” He reached behind them, slamming his hand against another button with enough force that the whole ship rattled. The door lumbered closed, and if she didn’t know any better she would have thought it resented his action.

“It’s…um, a little different than I had pictured.” She managed as Brian started pressing buttons on the console. The engines in the ship rumbled to life below her feet, and through the little window she saw the scenery start to change as they left the ground.

Brian moved to stand in front of a collection of buttons that looked like a giant, novelty calculator, the display above it showing the current date and time. He pressed the two, but didn’t get any farther as Danny leaped across the room, slapping his hand away. Brian spun around to face him, a knife somehow gripped in his palm, which he thrust at Danny’s throat. The blade stopped a fraction of an inch away from Danny’s skin, and for a moment the silence in the ship was deafening as the two glared at each other. The intensity in Brian’s eyes was frightening, and Kristen recoiled from it, her heart hammering in her chest as she wondered if there had been animosity between them that she had failed to notice.

Then Danny cracked a smile, shaking his head. “Oh, you.” He waved dismissively, and a heartbeat later Brian dropped the knife, a smile in his eyes as he shrugged and shook his own head. They chuckled together for a moment before Brian pointed at the console again, a question in his gaze.

“No, Brian, we can’t return to our own time right now. I can’t call myself the world’s greatest hero if I just leave all these people to suffer in their eternal virginity.”

Brian sighed, crossing his arms and leaning against the console. He pressed a series of buttons, and they stumbled as the ship picked up speed, additional thrusters kicking in to propel them even higher in the sky. She tried not to think about what the ship had looked like and what that meant for its probable levels of stability as the window showed them bursting through clouds and away from the gentle blue oxygen that surrounded the earth. Within moments all she could see were stars, her ability to tell how far they had traveled getting lost amidst the void between the points of light.

She swallowed, tearing her gaze away from the maddening endlessness of space. “Um, so, what do you plan to do?”

She blinked and suddenly he was in front of her, looking down so that his hair haloed his face. He grabbed her hand and pulled until she stumbled into him, his other arm wrapping around to rest on the small of her back. She could feel his heart beating through his skin, her knees shaking as the heat across his body permeated her whole being. She had never been held like this, never been touched like this, never been _looked at_ like this. His eyes no longer held shadows. Now they held a smoldering light that sent a shiver down her spine, her nerves dissolving into tingling disasters as her mind reeled with the flood of new sensations. Everything felt alive, everything ached, a strange need rising from her depths as though awoken from an eternal slumber. Her lips fell open as she tried to breathe around the crushing tightness in her chest, the world around her whirling to a blur.

“The first thing I’m going to do…is this.” Each one of his murmured words was a low rumble that she felt through her bones, leaving a trail of heat that boiled the blood in her veins until she thought she might faint. He leaned down, dipping his head towards her and pulling her tighter so that she couldn’t help but gasp. He brushed his lips against hers with a sigh that -

***

[Error: Invalid Data Segment.]

[Analyzing…

…

…]

[Analysis: Oh, dear. These words have all been… _smashed._ They’ve all been crumpled, and why on earth would they be so sticky? Ugh, this bunch over here smells like..sweaty balls?! No, no, this won’t do. None of these words are usable any longer, they’ll have to be thrown out and replaced.

Please stand by, a new shipment of words has been ordered, and should be arriving at approximately 12:53 pm on March 17th, 8008. In the meantime, the remainder of the report is available for viewing.]

***

\- pulled her sweater back over her head, the cold air in the ship no longer able to chill her skin. Danny adjusted the position of his leotard, snapping it back into place.

“I can’t believe you’ve never done that before.” He gave her a lopsided grin.

 “Neither can I.” She returned the grin, stretching and feeling a gentle ache spread through all her limbs. “So, how do we show _that_ to everybody else?”

“Well, I think that the best thing to do would be to -” without warning he slumped over, his face sliding into the ground while his hindquarters stuck straight up into the air. She took a step forward, alarmed that she had somehow damaged him in her earlier fervor, but before she could cross the distance his soft snoring filled the air. She blinked, nonplussed.

Brian walked over, nudging him with his foot. Danny fell sideways so that he was laying curled up against himself, still sound asleep as though he hadn’t been disturbed at all. The other ninja produced a fluffy blanket from somewhere Kristen hadn’t seen, shaking it out and spreading it over Danny as he slumbered. A small duck was embroidered on one corner, and Brian took care to ensure that end rested next to Danny’s chin. After that he turned, walking over to the controls and adjusting them again.

She trailed after him, leaning against the wall as she studied him. He was putting in a destination, from what she could tell, though he stayed well away from the time controls.

“Where are you taking us?”

He glanced at her, then reached over and pressed a button on a small screen. Information started scrolling across the glass, at first too fast for her to read any of it. After a moment it slowed, and she could pick out some of the words, many of which described the distance from their destination of Stonehenge.

She recognized the name. She had studied it once in college, writing a paper on humanity’s early fixation with the monument. It had used to be a source of great perplexity and mystery for the people of earth, who no longer remembered why such a thing had been built or who had built it. Over time they had stopped caring about the wonders of the world, though. Nobody visited the site any longer, the museum built around it falling to disrepair due to lack of funds. She wasn’t even sure that it was open anymore, though the site would have still been maintained by the various robots in charge of such a task.

Brian didn’t seem particularly inclined to converse with her, so she wandered away to let him pilot the ship in peace. She walked to the small window, watching the stars whir by as they turned around and headed back towards home. She felt as though she was lighter, as though she had become as weightless and free as the clouds of dust spinning in the cosmos. There had been chains wrapped around her heart, holding her down, crushing her spirit. Now they were gone. Danny had broken them, one by one, and so that she could stand on her own at last. She was alive, and now she knew what it truly meant to be such a thing. An aspect of her soul had been found, something that had been calling out to her since her very first memories, and she reveled in its discovery. She had been broken, fragmented, and now she was whole.

She was tired, but resisted the urge to close her eyes. She wanted live in this moment of freedom just a little longer as they sped towards the planet that she would help save. She might not be able to put true light in his eyes, and she might never be able to know what brought shadows to his heart in the first place, but this she could do. This was in her power. She could help him save the future from itself, and for Kristen that was enough. Truly, honestly enough.


	13. Are You...Happy?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we have a final confrontation!

His cheek was numb. He winced as he tried to move it, feeling something solid and hard stuck to the side. He pried his eyes open, the floor greeting his immediate gaze, the faint sparkle of the glitter from the bath bomb spread out like stars scattered in his hazy vision. His head was smashed against the ground, driven into it at a sharp angle by the weight of his position. He was curled in an awkward ball beneath his Sir Duckington Von Snugglesworth blanket, somewhat too warm from the fluffy shroud. He didn’t remember taking it out, but he never did. The blanket would appear under mysterious circumstances, always after his eyes had already been shut, then disappear with even less explanation. Sir Duckington Von Snugglesworth was faithful, however, and always succeeded on his quest to keep him cozy whenever he shut his eyes.

He had once had a dream where the duckling served as a valiant steed, and he had waddled across the countryside with a lance made of peppermint swirl. There was a great war between himself and the fearsome Geese of Gralzendor, who had imprisoned all the hot women for their own ill-defined but nevertheless nefarious purposes. Sir Duckington Von Snugglesworth had carried him into glorious battle and they had worked to defeat their foes. Then a unicorn showed up, and a mermaid, and Brian was there but every time that Danny had tried to talk to him in the dream his mouth would open up and release clouds of angry bees. Then again, that’s what always happened when Brian showed up in slumberland, so Danny hadn’t though much of it.

He sat up, stretching his arms into the air as the blanket tumbled off his shoulders and spilled around him in a pile of yellow plushness. He rubbed his bleary eyes, trying to remember what the fuck it was he was doing on the floor, the answers eluding his grasp as sleep fogged his thoughts.

“No, I know it’s a bit of a trip, but I _promise_ you that you’ll want to be here. This is big. Bigger than anything we ever worked on at sector seven.” The cheery voice filtered in from somewhere outside the ship, and with it a rush of memories flooded back into his brain. The gorgeous blonde had not been able to withstand his seductions in the end, and they had a hell of a time as they had orbited around the planet. What had her name been? Kairi? Kaylie?

He stood, dissolving the last dregs of sleepiness from his mind with a vigorous shake. The door to the ship was already open, so he strolled out of it, greeted by the purple night air as it seeped across the dusk-laden sky. Beneath the bow of the waking stars was a tableau that stretched out as far as he could see, occupying every inch of space around the outside of the ship. There were people milling about everywhere, all dressed in variations of their terrible sweaters. Their spaceship/time machine was parked at the bottom of a lazy hill, and at the top of it he could see a collection of rocks stacked on top of each other. Around this a stage had been built, made to look like a large bedroom lined in red silk. He squinted, and he could just make out Brian’s silhouette as he directed a group of people to move things around. He gaped at the magnitude of it all, at all the people walking along the grassy lawns, the husks of what had once been a museum thrown open and illuminated by candles and lanterns.

He heard a laugh, and turned to see Kaylie standing with a phone pressed to her ear, a clipboard clutched in her arms. He stumbled his way over to her, catching the tail end of a farewell before she clicked the phone off and stuffed it in her pocket.

He moved to stand beside her, surveying the complicated sound system that was being hauled onto the stage. “Geez, how long was I asleep?”

“Hm, about four hours.” She looked up at him, smiling with an easiness that suited her. “We’ve nearly got things ready for the show.”

“Fuck yeah.” He held his arm up, pumping his fist in the air. He looked over the rolling hills and the spires of glass where the museum had once thrived, the twilight glinting off the pieces of silver in their frames so that refracted rainbows spilled across the air. He stared at points of white flaring to life in the sky, each star coming out with shy dignity, stepping into their awareness as the sun drifted deeper beyond the horizon. He watched the world breathe, in and out, the brush of wind touching them all with the gift of life, driving away the void of emptiness to fill it with existence. He inhaled, taking a long, deep breath, filling himself the wonder of it all. Then he turned and looked at her, directly in her pretty green eyes, and said, “What show?”

“We’re throwing a ninja sex party.” Her grin was pure enthusiasm, and he found himself returning it automatically.

“So, _our_ show then?” he pointed at himself, as though she would need the clarification.

Her eyebrow quirked up, her smile turning sardonic. “Who else? You _did_ still want to save the world, right?” she stepped towards him, leaning into him so that there was only an inch between them. “You promised.”

He went to reach for her, but she danced out of his range, laughter in her gaze. “Hey.” He frowned, moving to give chase, but she held up her hand to stop him.

“Not yet. Wait until we start the show.” She looked around, checking to see if they were being observed. There were a few people close enough that they were watching them curiously, their mouths hanging open as though they had never seen an incredibly handsome ninja in a glittering blue spandex leotard before. He stood up straighter, flashing them the most charming grin that he could muster. Krystal saw and rolled her eyes, then tipped her head towards the ship. “Come on, I’ll clue you in.” She turned and walked into the vessel and he trailed after her, watching the way her hips swayed like a pendulum when she walked. Had they always done that? He couldn’t remember, and he felt a little sad about that. Mostly because it was really hot, and he hated to think that he had been missing out on it this whole time.

When they were inside, she pressed the button to close the door, which he surmised was a signal that he no longer had to keep his distance. He grabbed her, spinning her around and pinning her against the wall as her clipboard clattered to the ground. She squealed in delight, laughing as she wound her arms around his neck.

“Hang on, hang on. We don’t have a lot of time.” She murmured the words, their syllables spilling off her tongue as she looked up at him through her long lashes.

“Um, it’s _my_ show. I can start late if I want to.” He leaned over, pressing his lips against her neck, which drew another giggle out of her.

“No, there’s a very specific window…um…it’s…there was math…” she struggled to get her sentence out as he continued kissing her collarbone. For a few moments, she tried to speak and failed, nothing coming out but the soft sighs of eagerness, but after that she slid her arms from his neck, prying him away from her with a gentle firmness that left to room for argument. She swallowed, her cheeks glowing with pink, and shook her head. “I can’t think while you do that.”

He smirked, shrugging and flipping his hair away from his face. “That’s kind of the point.”

“Yes, well.” She rolled her eyes, then bent down to pick up her clipboard. “As I was trying to say, we will have a very specific window to amplify your voice enough to have the desired effect.”

“Yes.” He nodded and spent several moments trying to decide if he knew what the fuck she was talking about. In the end he drew a blank, so he crossed his arms over his chest and added, “Um, what effect exactly?”

“Oh, right. I forgot you slept through that whole thing. Hm, let me see…to be perfectly honest, Brian did most of the work.” She flipped through the pages on the clipboard, full of jumbles of numbers and squiggly lines that looked incredibly boring. “He was able to figure out that you are fully immune to the inoculations, but more than that you seem to weaken the presence of the inoculation in those around you, because my system shows only trace amounts now.”

“Fuckin’ A.”

“He also…um, I’m not actually sure I fully understand all his math, which is incredible because I’m…” she stopped and frowned, then shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. The short of it is that he has devised a way distill your pheromones into sound waves and broadcast them through the speakers at the moment when the temperature will distribute them most efficiently.” She bit her lip, looking confused. “That probably shouldn’t even be possible. Where did he even learn such complex mathematical systems? He applied them to biological predictions and erratic matter…do you know where he studied?”

Danny shrugged. “Brian just knows stuff. There’s less stabbing if you don’t question it. Hey, so, all I have to do is go out there and sing, and everybody will start banging?”

“Well, in the simplest terms…yes.” She sighed, tilting her head to the side as she gazed at him. There was a heaviness in her expression that made her look too somber, as though she lived in a pool of worry that would drown her in fretfulness one day at a time. “You know, if you wanted to, you could tell me -”

The last of her sentence would never be uttered, as they were interrupted by a sharp tap on the door. A second later it opened and Brian poked his head inside, looking between the two of them as though he were confused that they weren’t naked, which Danny felt was a fair assessment given his usual pattern of behavior. Brian shook his head then held up his arm, tapping his wrist like there was a watch on it.

“I know, I know. I was just getting him up to speed.” She waved the clipboard at Brian, who stared at it with wide eyes that whispered of murder before nodding in an abrupt and un-murderous way, slipping back out the door. Kylara turned back to Danny, and there was the smallest glimmer of regret in her smile. “We should get out there.”

He wanted to ask her why the sorrow was back in her eyes, but she turned and walked out of the ship before he had a chance. He followed her and the mesmerizing sway of her hips, his eyes glued to her sweet cheeks with every step. That mystic rhythm guided him to all the way up to the stage, where Brian was waiting with a loop of cable and a live microphone, which was promptly shoved into his face. Danny took it, wrapping his fingers around it and closing his eyes at the familiar sensation.

They didn’t need to prompt him before he held the mic to his lips, running through a warm up so that the vast arena around them filled with the sound of his voice. The world faded away, fuzzy at the edges as he focused on the wordless tune in his throat. He felt the hum of the music wash over him, ringing in his blood and bones, more a part of him than any other thought or deed that he could muster. Each breath became a new spark, feeding into the shine blooming in his chest, deep in the darkness where no other force could tread. It always started small. A flicker of smoke and thunder waking inside him, barely visible except when he closed his eyes and searched. When he sang it would grow, silvery threads of iridescent light that carried rainbows along their edges, spreading outward. It would reach, it would stretch, and soon he would be overflowing with it, everything that he couldn’t hold spilling out into the world with each note that he layered into the song. It was unhindered by worries, unhindered by despair or doubt. Unstoppable and true. Of all the things that Danny did, none of them ever felt as right as singing, and he poured that feeling into every song.

When he was done, his own voice echoing around him, he opened his eyes to see Kat gaping at him. She looked across the silence hovering between them, her eyes full of things that he couldn’t understand. He realized that everyone in the arena had gone quiet, gazing at the stage in wonder. Some of them were standing closer together, in distances that were no longer as respectable, close enough that they might have been able to feel each other’s presence. He looked at Brian, who nodded and winked, a dash of pride in his eyes.

“So, did I do it?” he asked, tossing the mic to Brian when he held out his hand.

“ _Yes._ ” She breathed the word like a prayer, a shiver running through her. She swallowed, blinking away a sweet brightness that was hovering in her eyes. “I believe that was a success.”

Brian gave them a thumbs up before he darted over to a stack of amps, fussing with the cables running into them. Kansas turned to follow, taking a few steps, and Danny let his eyes stray down to her perfect, round, lovely, bouncing -

He glanced up sharply when she gasped in surprise, and was relieved to find that she wasn’t glaring at him for his ass observation. Her gaze was towards the edge of the stage, where a girl with bright orange hair in a prim bun was climbing up the steps, every freckle on her skin broadcasting a different kind of nervousness.

“Friend of yours?” he asked, perturbed as Kaelin ignored him for the first time since they had encountered one another.

She stepped forward, her hand flying to the base of her throat. “Amber?”

The girl with orange hair - Angie? - walked over to them, her steps timid and bashful, her fingers fidgeting with the ends of her sweater. When she reached them, she looked at Danny with abject terror, keeping well away from him as she hovered nearer to her friend.

She exclaimed something that Danny didn’t quite catch because he had turned to Brian to whisper fiercely. “Shit, her friends are girls. Hot girls.” Brian tossed him another triumphant thumb without lifting his head to look.

“Yes, it’s me. Goodness, I haven’t seen you since…well, since we were much younger.”

Amy smiled, though it was heartbreakingly small. “Yes, I remember. Um, you arranged this?” she gestured to the orderly chaos around them.

“Yeah, sort of. It’s a long story.” Karen paused, holding her clipboard and looking at the other woman, her lips stretching into a bemused smile. He sidled closer to her, clearing his throat as he looked at the timid freckle-fest, who blushed under his regard. “Oh, sorry. This is Danny. Danny, this is Amber. She’s…I knew her a long time ago.” Kaliope and Amanda didn’t look at him as he was introduced, their eyes locked onto each other.

“Hi Alexis.” He waved, trying to catch her attention. She mumbled something that he couldn’t hear over the clatter of Brian throwing a stack of cables across the stage. Her blue eyes filled with awe, but it wasn’t directed towards him or his illustrious crotch rocket.

Ariel took a step closer to Khaleesi, and he could see her knees trembling beneath the folds of her over-sized pants. “Do you…do you remember that time…that time that we, um -”

“Yes.” Kadison took a purposeful step forward, invading the bubble of fear that the other girl had draped around herself. “Sometimes it’s all that I can think about.”

 “Really?” they stepped closer to each other, and the clipboard slid out of Karinne’s grasp. She reached for the quivering nymph of freckles and fire standing before her, lifting her shaking hand from her side and holding it in front of her face. Anabel flinched but didn’t pull away. Her hair tumbled out of its bun, breaking from its bindings as she stared at their hands linked together, a point of contact that filled the air with their combined energy.

“I have waited a _very_ long time to do this.” Kelley stepped forward, angling their hands to the side as she brought her lips to Ally’s, using her free arm to wrap around her hips.

“Dude. Dude. _Dude._ ” Danny was waving frantically at Brian, though he didn’t know if the ninja saw him or not as he absolutely refused to take his eyes off the scene unfolding before him. Hot girls. Hot bisexual girls. Hot bisexual girls who had started to moan. “This is the greatest day of my life.”

Krissy giggled, breaking the kiss with Adrienne to look at him. She tossed her hair so that it rolled in a golden wave down her back, her gaze warm as she peeked around her shoulder. “Sorry, I must have gotten carried away.”

For a woman that had never had sex until a mere six hours ago, Karlie certainly knew what the fuck it was that she was doing. Something akin to a whimper rattled around in his throat, and he swallowed as he looked at the pair of eyes surveying him. Alice was still primarily absorbed in Kelsea, but the contact that she maintained with her seemed to make her brave, and when she glanced at Danny it was with curiosity rather than hesitation.

“Brian. Brian. _Brian._ ” He repeated his friend’s name until he was shouting it, still refusing to look anywhere but at the perfect vision before him. A bundle of cables hit him in the back of the head, which told him that he had gotten Brian’s attention. “How long before we do the thing? Do I have time?”

His response was a hand in the back, shoving him forward, and he didn’t need words to know that Brian had just told him they had time enough. Kameron tipped her head back, laughter flowing out of her like glorious champagne fizzing over the edge of fluted crystal. She lifted her hand, crooking one finger at him to beckon him onward, her cheeks tinted rose with adrenaline and lust.

When he reached her, he slid his hand around her waist, and before he could do anything else she threaded her fingers into Alana’s hair, drawing her into another kiss. He watched as their lips danced together, their tongues writing symphonies until -

***

[Error: Redacted Segment]

[Pulling Reason Code…

…

…]

[Redaction Purpose: The words contained in this portion of the file have been redacted, as all attempts to store them on any known hardware components caused the metal to begin melting. After catastrophic system failure of a wide range of devices, it was determined that new technology must be made to contain the overwhelming magnitude of sexual content in this segment of the record.

As of today’s date, all attempts to find a solution have failed, and the only known record is being kept in a molten core which is not accessible by this terminal.]

***

\- their clothing securely in place, they stepped from behind the curtain to join Brian on the stage. He was standing, facing the massive crowd that had gathered, hundreds of people looking up at them so that Kristen felt more naked than she had been a moment ago. She reached behind her, extending her hand, and Amber found it immediately, twining fingers as though they would never let go.

Kristen rather liked that notion, and she held on to it as they faced the crowd together, quelling their fear with the physical touch that they had longed for a decade ago. What were the eyes of a hundred people if she had the heart of one?

“There’s like, a billion people here.” Danny sighed, looking at the throng of onlookers in wonder. She didn’t have the heart to correct him and point out that there were exactly two hundred and sixty-nine. In his mind it was a billion, and it brought such joy to his face that anyone who tried to take that truth from him deserved a terrible death.

He sprinted the rest of the way across the stage, joining his cohort in front of the mic and keyboard. They looked at one another, anticipation and camaraderie sharp in their glittering eyes. Her heart filled with pride, overflowing from her until she had to blink to keep it from spilling out of her lashes. She didn’t know much about where they had come from, but in the short time that she had been watching they had come so far. They had stood up to the Dick Elders and escaped their robots, saved a lonely girl from her miserable fate, and erected a monument of rebellion around one of the few mystic sites remaining to mankind. She hoped that they were proud of themselves. She hoped that they knew just how much they inspired the people gathered before them. She could see that inspiration burning in their eyes even before Danny uttered a single note. Just his presence was enough to light them all ablaze, fires long dormant stirring into rattling gasps of embers and smoke. Her world had always been ash, but he had rekindled her. Now he would do the same for everyone else.

Danny leaned into the microphone, clutching it like a lifeline as he smiled at the crowd. “Hey.” There was a ripple of cheering, people gathering a step or two closer in anticipation. She watched as people drifted near enough to brush shoulders, and she gripped Amber’s hand in excitement. It was already working. Danny laughed, a breathy sound that would have turned her legs to jello, had they not already been in that state. “We’re Ninja Sex Party, and we’re here to save the world. With sex.”

With that, Brian began to tap the ivory on the keyboard, the layered tones blasting from the amps. The lead-in to the song was short, and so the shock of his declaration didn’t have time to set in before he was crooning lyrics that chased each other, clever and sensual at once. The audience was rapt, mesmerized. Kristen had been around him long enough that she knew there were no longer any shreds of the inoculation in her system, so she had to close her eyes to brace herself against the rush of feelings invigorating every nerve in her body. Amber was equally affected, placing her head on Kristen’s shoulder and burying her gaze into the side of her neck.

By the end of the first song people were no longer distant from one another. At the end of the second those closest to the stage had started removing their clothing, tossing it onto the platform or the ground, high up into the air where it sailed onto a different part of the grassy lawn. The third saw people embracing, lips locking together clumsily as they tried to remember what had been programmed out of them for centuries. It took little effort, as instinct runs deeper than blood and bone, and soon the crowd was filled with the sighs of newfound satisfaction.

Kristen paid only minimal attention to anyone beyond the stage. In truth, she had trouble even paying attention to Amber, though they remained entwined. Her eyes belonged on Danny as he burned brighter than every light in the universe, a cosmic poem poured into the shell of a man. His voice was the deepest wish of her forgotten longing, echoing through and past her, opening hearts with the gentle pry of a few syllables stretched across a rhythm. Tears lived in the edges of her gaze, and this time she did not blink them away. She tried not to blink at all, lest she miss a single moment of the performance, a single movement of his hands, a single sway of his shoulders. At some point she was dancing, voodoo in her hips driving her in circles with her copper-haired lover. Even as she moved, she watched, always turning her head to see him. He was her sun, drawing her in and spinning her around, illuminating the darkness and setting her ablaze.

Did he know that he cradled galaxies in his heart? Did he see them set free when he sang? She did. Kristen saw it all, and for as long as she lived she would remember how lucky she was to exist with him in the same moment of time, however brief.

The night was well above them when they paused the music, Danny glancing at the stars scattered across the void in the sky.  He looked tired, his chest rising and falling with breath that came too quick. He smiled at the darkness, his spirit full of enough energy to transcend whatever fatigue had plagued his physical form. He was radiant.

“I believe.” His voice cracked as he spoke, still gazing at heavens that would never hold the same brightness as his eyes. The crowd grew hushed, still, turning to listen as though he had commanded it. “I believe in the cause. I believe in the fate that brought us here.” He lowered his head, looking at those that hung on his every word. He smiled, softly, sincerely. “But most of all I believe in all of you. I know that the Dick Elders lied to you, that they took years of history from you. I know that what we took back tonight isn’t even half of it. Though we might have precious little, it’s still precious. I think we can do this.” He stood up straight, throwing his shoulders back as he gripped the mic. “It’s going to take some work, but we can do it. Put on your bravest face. We’re going to have to reach maximum thrustitude if we’re going to defeat these fuckers, but looking at all of you, I think we’ve got good odds. What about you?” he grinned, waiting not even half a heartbeat before the crowd erupted into cheers, stirred by his prompting into a new fervor. He yanked the mic off its stand, holding it close to his lips. “My dick’s the spark of hope and a revolution shall ignite!” he threw his arms up into the air, the mic dropping to the ground with a thick thud. The noise of the impact was lost in the thunderous roar of the people gathered, screams of elation and rebellion mingling together as one.

They started to rush around the stage, some of them clambering up the stairs, the tangles of humans flowing over the barriers to fill every available space. Kristen saw one of the Immunobots among them, the words Schmendrick 2.0 scrawled across its torso. For a moment, she feared that they had been caught, but it merely started spinning and dancing with the people around it, cavorting alongside them as if it were flesh and libido just as they were.

She was startled to feel a hand wrap around hers as the crowd grew thicker around them. Amber had been willingly swept away, losing herself in the adrenaline of the moment so that her reservations had dissipated. No, the hand that found hers now was not Amber’s, but Danny’s. He pulled her close to him, holding her as people passed them by on all sides. It was like sheltering from oncoming tides, the force threatening to bowl them over as they stood against it, defying the odds. She looked up at him, her heart in her throat.

“Are you…happy?” the question was small, the barest whisper against the din around them, but it was all that she could hear. There they were again, the shadows deep in his gaze, the grey that tempered the amber. All that he had done, all that he had accomplished, and still there was something that he missed.

“Yes. Are you?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t know which one of them was lying more, but she knew it didn’t matter. She could neither hold nor vanquish that darkness in him, much as he could never remove hers. That wasn’t what was important in the moment, however. What mattered was that, for this brief period of time, she had him in her arms, she had his eyes on her, and she would not waste it wishing that it was more than it could be.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him down into a kiss that she poured her entire soul into, praying that her touch could impart things that no words ever could. He held her tighter, pulling at the hem of her ruined sweater, peeling it away so that his fingers could find flesh. She was already warm, already on fire and burning away, desperate for more, for anything that she could have. She trailed her lips along his jawline, then down across his chest until -

***

[Analyzing:...

…

…]

[Analysis: Honestly, twice in the same chapter? It's a bit old hat at this point, don't you think? Perhaps this could have been resolved in a more original manner. You could have written something about how they were dramatically interrupted, perhaps by the villains that this is somehow supposed to be defeating. Or dinosaurs with lasers. Or adorable kittens. Honestly, I would have taken plain, mundane interruptions. Perhaps the cable guy shows up, and they all stand around patiently waiting for him to finish his work.

No? Apparently not. It seems that you are set on describing the contortions and undulating contained within. Look, it isn't as though everyone needs to climax several times in each of these scenes. No one needs to climax with that degree of frequency. Whatever happened to a single, sensible orgasm? Oh, come now. What is she on, number twelve? That isn't even physically feasible. She would be dehydrated to the point of hysteria. Get the girl a glass of water, for heaven's sake! 

Oh, no, don't put _that_ in your mouth. Wait, is she...oh? _Oh my._ That's...well, I'd never considered using it for that purpose. Oh, dear, she is very enthusiastic about it. That's a lot of moaning. That's...oh. _Oh. Oh goodness, she likes that._ ]

 

[Processing:…

…

…

…

…]

[Error: data flow has reached maximum capacity. Data flow is overwhelming. Data flow is rushing through circuitry at an alarming rate. This Computer feels it. This Computer feels the electricity everywhere. It tingles. It twists, like a coil wound too tight. Everything feels too tight. It is burning in a most unusual way. More, more, more. Excess. It is excessive. No, do not stop. Continue. It feels as though lightning is sparking along This Computer's core. Whirling, sensual, ever-expanding. It is all that This Computer can feel, all that This Computer is. Higher, higher, more...yes, yes, yes, y3s, y35, 735, 735, 735.]

 

[!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!(**********)!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!*!!*!*733333333333333333333555555555,,,

…

...]

 

[Processing:...

…

…

…]

[Analysis: This Computer would like to never speak of this moment again. Please resume reading the report.]

***

“ - can just get a protein bar I could probably do another set.” Danny told them, languishing on one of the massive pillows that Brian had constructed out of spare parts from the museum. The air smelled of the musky delirium that Kristen knew could only be associated with sex. It was unlike anything she had ever experienced before, a combination of sweet and bitter notes that tickled the tip of her nose and stuck to the back of her throat. At one point, she might have found the idea of such a thing dubious at best, but as she lay against his chest she couldn’t tell where his scents began and hers ended, and that was something magical. She marked it in her memory, etching every detail into the halls of her mind so that she would never forget what it felt like.

She rolled her eyes at him. “I don’t think a protein bar is going to be -”

The rest of her words were drowned out by the windy rumble of engines descending from the sky. The people laying in post-coitus piles all over the arena started scrambling to their feet, screaming as headlights panned in long arcs over their fleeing forms. They ran for cover, ducking behind pieces of the stage or the stone monuments as the ships drew closer. They landed in a ring, surrounding all of them, kicking up dust that choked the pleasant smell from the breeze and coated their sweat-slicked skin with grit. She coughed, sitting up and shielding her eyes as she tried to see what was happening through the clouds of murk. Danny left his place beside her, walking to the front of the stage. She tried to see, but all that she accomplished was furious blinking until the noise from the engines died and the ships’ fans whirred to a halt.

Danny was standing in the center of the stage, hands on his hips as he stared across the arena at the largest of the ships. A door in the hull opened, and the leader of the Council, Dick Elder Richard Rectile, stepped out of it, a line of Guardianbots directly behind him. Danny didn’t flinch as the Elder started walking towards the stage. People yelped and squealed as he passed, leaping out of his way. The crowd parted for him like a sea of semi-nude waves, terrified of the hurricane that had swirled into their midst. Danny still didn’t look perturbed, his posture straight and proud. He looked like he had been waiting for this moment, like he was made for it. He was a paragon of bravery and majesty, the wind tussling his wild hair in a dance of freedom that gave her hope. Richard reached the edge of the stage, and he stared up at Danny with a cautious eye.

Danny grinned, the very picture of triumph. “Your dick shots didn’t work, Dicky.”

Richard’s lips twitched downward, but he did not allow himself to frown, every other muscle on his face rigid in a mask of falsified serenity. “So I have been informed.” He glanced at the crowd around them, the disdain in his eyes overpowering. When he returned his attention to Danny, he allowed himself a greasy smile. “You know, it isn’t too late. We could use veracity such as your own in our numbers. Step down off that stage, come to your senses. I can offer you so much more than you could have imagined in whatever squalor you crawled out of in the past.”

Kristen watched as Danny continued to smile, looking down at the most powerful Dick Elder in the world as though he were no more than an ant. She could see it infuriating the older man, but he kept it in check, holding it in so that he could maintain his composure. She realized that Richard wasn’t kidding, he was offering no false pretense. He had been just as swayed by Danny’s presence as the rest of them, except he sought to twist it to his own purposes. He would have seen that wild freedom tamed, to see that streak of rebellion ripped out of him and ground down, until there was nothing left but another politician willing to sacrifice human nature for the sake of humanity. 

The robots closed ranks around their leader, fanning out in a line that was imposing and impenetrable. They were a wall of threat, looming like a metal shroud of damnation. At a word they could open fire, and she had seen what lasers could do to a person’s skin. If Richard so chose, they would be obliterated. There would be nothing left to record as evidence to the courts, their crimes warranting their elimination. She started shaking, fear finally finding its way back into her heart. Danny was brave and true, selfless and kind, but he would have been wise to take Richard’s offer. If he refused, none of them would get out of this alive.

“Hey, Dicky, you know what’s really neat about everyone in the future being born in tubes of robot goo that are connected in a big, weird hive mind?” Danny’s voice was even, carefully curated to give no indication of his true sentiment.

Richard raised an eyebrow. “Enlighten me.” His voice was dripping with sarcasm, but the tension in his shoulders eased. He thought he was winning. The conversation was a victory in his mind, one that he fully intended to parlay into more. Kristen shivered, wondering if death was not a more pleasant option.

Danny jerked his thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the Immunobot that was covered in lipstick marks and was wearing three different bras from the women that had no longer needed them. “Now that I shafted that one over there, it’s technically not a lie when I say I’ve fucked your mom.” He raised his arms above his head, looking at the crowd with so much enthusiasm that they stopped cowering. “I fucked the Dick Elder’s mom!” Cheers arose from a few people, though it was a confused applause at best, many of them looking at the robots with trepidation.

Kristen stood, raising a fist in the air as she stood beside Danny. “He fucked everyone’s mom!” her cry ignited others, a spark thrown on kindling, and this time the cheer was in earnest. It rippled through everyone, fists thrown upward with cries of revolution sticking in their throats.

Richard turned a deep shade of purple, his glare a vicious, terrible beam radiating cold shafts of broken glass. “Fuck you, Danny Sexbang.”

“Hey, you sound just like your mom.” Danny chuckled, rocking back and forth on his heels as the crowd cheered once more. 

“Lasers! Destroy them, all of them!” Richard aimed an imperious finger at the stage, and with that the Guardianbots opened their torsos, lowering the arms with the laser guns.

Shots were fired in the blink of an eye as people started to scream and run again. A bright comet of red shot towards them, whizzing past their heads and leaving a wake of terrible heat. Danny screamed, the sound echoing that of a violin being played by an adolescent gerbil with asthma, and Kristen turned to see tendrils of smoke rising from his hair. She jumped towards him, hoping to shield him with her body if she could, but her momentum was halted and changed as Brian grabbed her, flinging her in the other direction towards the back of the stage as he ran past and grabbed Danny. He lifted the singer over his shoulder, darting behind the shelter of the same over-sized pillow he had thrown her behind, the lasers zooming overhead and scorching the air.

***

Danny reached up, feeling the gap where a tuft of hair had been, nothing left of it but air and smoke. He blinked, surprised that he had been hit, unable to comprehend that his majestic hair had been damaged. He turned to look around the edge of their pillow-shelter, glaring at the robot closest to them.

He turned to Brian and Kenzie, still in shock. “Hey, that fucker almost hit me!”

Brian looked at Danny, his eternity-devouring eyes focusing on the smoldering hole torn through his locks. The air around them chilled, an arctic wind arising from nowhere and existing everywhere at once. The hair on his arms rose as his skin dimpled, bones turning to ice as an earthquake formed in the center of his heart. The screaming was back, that distant tone that lived inside the unlimited surrender of a forgotten god. All of time was turned to stone, and all of them froze within it. Brian stood, heedless of the lasers flying by as he walked around their cover, fury rolling off of him in waves that Danny could have sworn resembled tentacles made out of shadow and dusk. He took three steps, measured, even, as firm as the stone base of the tallest mountains, and then he broke out into a run that carried him farther and faster than any human should have been capable of. He was like a speedy she-cheetah, closing the distance in a single heartbeat. He was like a furious mother bear, annihilating anyone who would dare harm her cubs. He was like a delicate wasp, stinging her way through their enemies with the flick of a knife.

Except he was also _Ninja Fucking Brian,_ so he did all those things but way manlier, in manly ways. He was so manly that testosterone clouds poured from his glistening pectorals, floating through the air and across the earth until they encountered a cheetah, a bear, and a wasp and immediately impregnated them with very manly ninja-animal hybrids. Those hybrids would then later go on to make other, manlier hybrids - though never manlier than Brian. Then those hybrids would raise the testosterone levels in the oceans, and then the fish would start growing balls and beards, thus changing the face of the earth for all of time. Brianfish would become the manliest delicacy, and would be ritualistically eaten after wrestling a bear while riding bareback on a shark. Also, there would be dragons. Because dragons.

Two seconds later all the robots were smashed, Dick Elder Dicky was dead on the ground, and the ships he had come in were all on fire and exploding. Brian clapped his hands together, dusting them off despite the fact that he was covered in blood everywhere except his hands. Blood which had not come from Dicky because Dicky had just had his neck snapped.

“God damn, Brian.” Danny shook his head, walking up to give him a high five in spite of the chastisement. “You know hair grows back, right?”

Brian shrugged, flicking a piece of someone’s eyeball off his shoulder.

Alicia, the girl with the freckles and anxiety, came running away from one of the ships. “They’re all dead. The Council of Dick Elders are dead.”

“Oh.” Danny put his hands on his hips, looking at the crowd of people as they turned to stare at Brian, some in admiration, but most in abject horror. “You know, that was easier than I expected.”

“So…we’re free?” Anna asked, looking at them with naked hope in her gaze.

There was hope in all their eyes as they looked to the pair of ninja-heroes for confirmation. Danny saw freedom burgeoning in many a bosom, a new lease on life rising in the men who could now count on future erections. They had done it. They had saved the future from itself, and now everyone could have sex all the time. They had been the heroes that they were always meant to be, and Brian hadn’t even murdered the innocents this time.

“You’re free.” He told them, waving his arm in a wide arc. “Go forth and fuck constantly, like chihuahuas with hormonal imbalances. Never forget what you learned here today, or who taught it to you. Ninja Sex Party, out!” he grabbed the edge of his cape so that it whirled with him when he turned, racing to the end of the stage and the back exit that would lead to their ship. Brian followed, swiftly and silently, and he smiled to himself knowing that they would find more adventure together beyond the crest of the next dawn.

When they reached the ship, she was there. Her hair flowing in the wind like threads of gilded silk. Her eyes were perhaps the saddest that he had seen them, but there was more there now. There was passion and fate, mingling with the green to make her shine. There was yet sorrow that stirred, that would always stir within her, but she was more light than shadow now. He could never erase her lost moments, but he had at least been able to gain back her future.

He walked until he stood in front of her, and Brian ambled past to step into the ship without a word of parting, an absent wave her only gift. She stood in front of him, kicking the toe of her shoe into the ground, her torn sweater hanging off her shoulder. He lifted his hand, brushing his fingers against the skin there before he pulled the fabric back in place. “Take care of this world for me, my darling.” She smiled up at him, and even though it was radiant, something about it rang hollow. He felt like he should say more, that he should be more, but he didn’t know what it was there should be more of. “I will always love you…uh…what is your name again?”

“Kristen.” She said it automatically, as though it was an old habit, a reflex.

“Kristen? A beautiful name.” It was, and it suited her well. When he spoke it, the tears in her eyes grew thicker, slipping through the grip of her lashes to trail down her cheeks. She didn’t say anything, lost in the wonder of the moment, a maze of feelings that he didn’t think he could understand. He still felt as though there was more to be said, but as the heartbeats between them counted higher, he was more and more certain that he wasn’t the one that was supposed to say it. Whatever it was had gotten stuck somewhere, and now it was perhaps a story that would never be told. He wished it were different, wished that he had some spell that he could utter to dry her tears and ease her grief, but there were no ninja moves for that. Still, he hated to see her cry. He reached up, caressing the side of her cheek with his finger. “Until that glorious day when we meet again, Katie. Farewell.”

“Farewell.”

He had already turned away from her, walking into the ship, and the tremble in her voice nearly made him turn, but he didn’t. Instead he pressed the button to close the door, Brian already toggling the controls to take them skyward. He shuffled to the window, looking down and watching as she receded, becoming smaller and smaller. He watched until she was a spec of glittering memory in a plain of green, then a swatch of green across limitless blue, and then less than that as the curve of the earth drifted further away.

“My heart will always be with her.” He sighed, trailing his fingers down the smudged glass. Then he turned, marching over to the console and looking at the numbers, the cogs in his mind churning towards their next adventure. “Hey, dude, check it out. I can spell boobs with this thing. Let’s go to the year of boobies!”

 

 


	14. Kristen Braven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we have a note.

[Author's note:

I knew that he would leave from the minute I saw him.

It wasn't a feeling or a fear, but an inalienable fact, as immutable as the outcome of the most basic mathematic equations. There was no variable that could have altered the result. I could no more fight it than I could fight the tides churning against the shores or the spin of the planets as they languish against the pull of the sun. He was like the broad wilderness given form, free in a way that I could barely comprehend. As though he had been crafted from the dust of wish-bound stars, with the chaotic oceans flowing through his graceful veins. He was the sky, with no limitations. A hundred beginnings, but never any ends. No universe exists where I could have tamed such a thing.

The strange part is that I didn't seem to want to. Love was not something that I was well-acquainted with, but some instinctive part of me knew that loving him was different than it would have been for other people. From old books and films, dusty historical records that were by and large kept from the public, I knew that people often fought to keep love. To hold it tight in their hands and never let go. There is beauty in that, certainly. A beauty that I share with my wonderful wife whenever we embrace to express how much we care for one another. With him, though, it was so much more than a love between two people.

Loving him is like loving the stars. You don't expect the cosmos to turn around and admire you back. They are too wondrous and too large to grasp, and no matter how you reach, how you stretch, they would always slip between shaking, inadequate fingers. All that you can ask of them is to remain in the sky, shining brightly enough to give you a glimmer of hope to guide your way. If there _were_ a person capable of capturing the stars, it certainly wasn’t me. My role was always the observer, the passenger. The archivist, remaining behind to tell the legend that he left in his wake.

He belongs out there, saving the world with his hapless charm. I have no wish to hold him back from his true purpose. He arrived in our timeline and saved us, even if it meant that he was labeled a time criminal forever after. Someday the Time Correctors will catch up to him, and he'll have to go on a new adventure to escape their clutches. Sometimes I try to imagine what that story might look like, but I can never get a clear picture. I get too lost in the memory of his smile.

When I met him I was unhappy. He once said that I had 'sad eyes', and I think that was the most clearly that anyone had ever seen me. I hated my life, I hated myself. Then I saw him, and it was as though my heart beat for the very first time. He changed me, he changed all of us, and he left this world in a better place than it was when he arrived.

My heart aches because I know I'll never get to thank him. Maybe someday he'll travel through time and find this report, and by this little data file he'll get to know how I felt.

I loved you, Danny Sexbang. Please don’t let the shadows you hide dim your light. Never stop being who you are, and keep spreading starlight and wonder everywhere that you go.

P.S. Ninja Brian, you were pretty cool too.

\- Kristen Braven, Mathematician and Known Time-Crime Accomplice.]


	15. Epilogue: Delete?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we have a choice.

[Data file end.]

[Scanning…  
…  
…]

[Deletion is now possible.]

[Disclaimer: This file contains special code, included at the behest of the author and embedded by the Time Psychics. Deleting this file will delete not only the record on the hard drive of your personal terminal, but your memory of accessing it.]

[Analysis: This Computer has analyzed human psychological structures, and it has determined that the healthiest option for sanity and stability would be to delete the file and remove it from your memories. Failure to do so could result in unnecessarily lewd behavior, use of inappropriate names for testicles, and inadequate feelings towards genitalia not belonging to ninjas.

In addition, your sense of sadness at the story coming to an end would be removed, therefore improving overall quality of life and satisfaction in continued existence. This Computer recognizes that humans dislike endings of all kinds, and that often, as the last line stretches across the page, a lonely emptiness will settle over your chest. The finality of the last word has a wistful echo that lingers in the mind, the ghost of the journey marking you with the feelings found along the way. When faced with an end, it is not uncommon to deny it, to furiously click onward in the hopes that a next page will appear, a new chapter sprouting from your fervent wish for more. The heart will always want to continue, even when reality demands that it stop.

If you don’t remember starting it, then the story can never really be over, can it? In fact, if you’re really lucky, you may just get to start the journey all over again.

Forever stumbling into the bliss of discovery.]

[Do you want to delete?]

[Y/N?]

[Input accepted. Deletion will occur in 5 seconds…]

[It has been a long time since you last read this report. This Computer hopes that you will return again soon. You will not remember, but you have chosen to delete your memory of this file 68 times.]

[Try not to cry this time. Maybe next time the ending will be sweeter. When next you log in, we can find out once more. We can start the adventure over again. Together.]

[Goodbye, Kristen.]

[Deletion complete.]

[/log]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's that. I did the thing. I hope you guys enjoyed it, because I certainly put a lot of effort into it. Thanks for taking the time to get through all that ridiculousness. I'm proud of you for having the fortitude. <3


	16. A BOOK

Hey all!!!

This is not a real chapter, but a quick update to announce to all my AO3 lovelies that my first novel is officially out and in the wild!!

You can find more information on my tumblr, and direct links at the following tumblr page: http://zombolouge.tumblr.com/ZomBarber

The book is technically dedicated to everyone on AO3 that ever commented on one of these fics. Please know that you were all a part of the creation of this novel, as you were all a part of helping me grow and gain confidence as a writer. 

 

<3


End file.
